Monday, February 28, 2011

In a dispute that could have repercussions at other large Islamic universities and seminaries in the Muslim world, a clash between liberal ideas and religious orthodoxy has engulfed India's Darul Uloom Deoband University - South Asia's largest Muslim seminary, which sought to appoint a 'modern' vice-chancellor.

Maulana Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi (pictured), the new mohatmim (vice-chancellor) of Darul Uloom Deoband, regarded as the world's largest and most powerful school for the dissemination and propagation of Islam, was appointed on 10 January.

He was forced to resign within weeks, then retracted his resignation, in a tangled web of allegations and accusations as a dispute between hardline and liberal groups erupted over his appointment.

Only Al Azhar University in Cairo has comparable importance in the Islamic world, with some commentators saying the crisis at Darul Uloom Deoband could lead to Al Azhar emerging as the leading centre for Islamic learning.

Deoband's 300-year-old core curriculum teaches Islamic law, Islamic jurisprudence and traditional Islamic spirituality (known as Tasawwuf, which is the focus of Sufism). However at a time when seminaries in India are portrayed as being out of touch with the modern world, there is a need for reform while assuring preservation of Islamic ethics.

It was felt Vastanvi would modernise education in Deoband. The new vice-chancellor, who holds an MBA, announced plans to acquire 250 hectares of land for medical, pharmaceutical and engineering colleges as one of his first acts in office.

Vastanvi himself had set up a model madrassa (educational institution), Jamia Islamia Ishaatul Uloom, in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, providing modern and technical education alongside religious education.

However Vastanvi has become embroiled in a dispute over comments he allegedly made on the highly emotive 2002 Gujarat violence, in which more than 1,000 Muslims were killed by a Hindu mob. The massacre triggered major controversy among Muslim scholars and students, particularly on the role of the state and police in fanning the violence.

In an interview in The Times of India after assuming office, Vastanvi reportedly called on the Muslim community to move on and look beyond the Gujarat violence.

He was also quoted as saying the Muslim community had become better off during Narendra Modi's rule as Chief Minister of Gujarat state, a comment that caused outrage among Muslims who have not forgiven Modi for his support of Hindu hardliners, seen as the principal instigators of the 2002 violence.

Vastanvi offered to resign over his comments. Later he backtracked, saying he had been misquoted and insisting he had not quit.

The incident has split the Muslim community. Haseeb Ahmed Siddiqui, administrator at Darul Uloom Deoband, feels Vastanvi failed to follow the Islamic principles of the university and should quit.

But a section of liberal Muslim clerics said the controversy was "unfortunate". They want Vastanvi to continue. Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan said Vastanvi "is a liberal Muslim face, who could bring change in the madrassa curriculum".

As a religious school, Deoband has tried to remain apolitical, unlike its followers in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has denounced the Taliban's extremist political ideology, even though many Taliban were educated according to Deobandi principles.

However, in recent years Darul Uloom has been in the news for issuing controversial fatwas or decrees, like asking Muslim women to refrain from working with men and prohibiting all Muslims to work in banks.

Writer and journalist Rasheed Kidwai believes Vastanvi is not a true reformist. "Darul Uloom Deoband is India's oldest and most conservative seminary. The media labelling of 'reformist' Vastanvi as its vice-chancellor is misleading," he said.

"Vastanvi has been a member of Deoband's governing council - majil-e-shoora - since 1998. So, theoretically speaking, he is party to all measures including the fatwa against terrorism and the disapproval of watching TV even if it means the live telecast of the Haj and wearing of jeans by women."

Kidwai added: "The key point is that as an orthodox religious institution, Deoband has been opposed to the idea of ishtehad [reforms]."

"It is not clear if Vastanvi supports the case for ishtehad, or the clergy's ability to permit any concessions into the way of life as it was practiced 1,400 years ago."

Some say the present crisis has more to do with the politics of the Jamiat-e-Ulema, a body of nationalist Deobandi clerics who have a strong influence over Darul Uloom Deoband, where one faction is intent on ousting an 'outsider' like Vastanvi.

Some Muslim scholars believe Arshad Madani, of the Madani family that has controlled the affairs of Deoband for many decades, is behind the opposition to Vastanvi. It was reported that Madani wanted the job after the death of former vice-chancellor Maulana Margboor Rahman.

Madani and Vastanvi are also at loggerheads over the proposal of the Indian government to improve and modernise madrassa education in India. While Madani is apprehensive of any changes might damage the religious identity of madrassas, Vastanvi has a more accommodating approach.

Vastanvi's fate will be decided by Deoband's executive body later this month. But if the dispute takes deeper roots it could have wider repercussions.

Kidwai said students may be "forced to take a stand and in many cases divide themselves as 'hardliners' and 'moderates' at an impressionable stage of their lives. Subsequently political parties step in, making things go from bad to worse."

Sunday, February 27, 2011

İstanbul is a city whose streets are filled with friends of God. Whichever suburb a person visits, they will encounter a dervish lodge or the türbe of a Sufi saint.

At times, they are befuddled as to whose station they will call on, or upon whose soul will they send their supplications. But if the intention is set to tour a türbe, then, naturally, roads will lead to those best known. To Eyüp Sultan, for example. Or to Aziz Mahmut Hüdai’ye, or to Sümbül Efendi. The fact that the türbe of Sümbül Efendi -- an esteemed Ottoman scholar honoring Kocamustafapaşa’s Ali Fakih district with his presence for almost 500 years -- has always been a center of attraction notwithstanding, it has begun to host an even greater number of visitors in recent years.

Whether it be through the efforts of the Fatih Municipal Council to renew the dergah, the Mevlevi dervish lodge, and its surroundings -- the one-time center of Sufism -- or through the videos of the young imam of the Sümbül Efendi Mosque, Hafız İbrahim Yıldız’s recital of the Quran being broadcast over the Internet, this place has come to life. In particular, the serving of soup to the mosque’s congregation following morning prayer on Sundays, as was the case during Sümbül Efendi’s time, has heightened interest in the mosque and türbe. The people wanting to prostrate in ritual prayer at Sümbül Efendi’s türbe and ask him to pray for them are filling the mosque’s courtyard. So what awaits us in a visit to Sümbül Efendi?

The spiritual master of the Sümbüliye branch of the Halveti Sufi spiritual order, Sümbül Efendi, whose real name was Yusuf Bin Ali, was born in 1452 in Merzifon. He was educated from a very young age in İsparta and travelled to İstanbul to learn from the famous scholar of the Fatih Sultan Mehmet and Sultan Bayezid II era Efdalzâde Hamîdüddîn Efendi. Through the initiative of Grand Vizier Koca Mustafa Paşa, he later established his dergah in what is now the Ali Fakir district adjacent to a church converted into a mosque. He contributed to the education and training of many scholars and Sufi saints. One of them was his son-in-law Merkez Efendi, whose türbe is situated in Zeytinburnu. Sümbül Efendi is at the same time the spiritual master of the Sümbüliye branch of the Halveti Sufi spiritual order. There are many treatises describing the Halveti order in his name. He is also one from whom Ottoman sultans frequently requested prayers. According to one narration, he told Sultan Yavuz Selim that he would conquer Egypt. He passed away in the year 1529 and was buried in the courtyard of his dergah. Come along to Sümbül Efendi’s dergah.

Let me explain what you will encounter, if indeed you set out with the wish to visit Sümbül Efendi. Sümbül Efendi’s dergah is positioned right at the center of Kocamustafapaşa, built up around an expansive courtyard. Three separate doors lead from the courtyard to the outside suburb. The entrance of one of the doors is surrounded by a cemetery on both the right and left sides. The grave of one of the esteemed calligraphers of the day, Hafız Osman Efendi, is here. Just beyond the cemetery is Sümbül Efendi’s türbe. It is very clean and well-looked after. Further along lies Şeyh Yakup Efendi, and to the north is Şeyh Hasan Adli Efendi’s grave. One must not forget to read the Fatiha while here. At the foot of Sümbül Efendi’s türbe lie the grandchildren of Caliph Ali, descended from his son Hüseyin. According to one narration, these twin sultans, as they are called, came to İstanbul with the Prophet’s companions for the conquest of İstanbul and passed away here. According to another story, they were captured as prisoners of war by the Byzantines and thus came to İstanbul. The graves of these two sultans, Fatma and Sakine, were lost over time. Sümbül Efendi discovered that they were buried here. Their current türbe was subsequently constructed by Sultan Mahmud II. At the head of their türbe is a centuries-old cypress protected by a wooden structure. It is believed that this cypress was planted after their burial by Jabir, a companion of the Prophet. The dergah has become a place frequented by Alevis due to the presence of these twin sultans. In the middle of the courtyard is the Sümbül Efendi Mosque. The mosque was in fact originally a Byzantine church. The church was converted into a mosque by Koca Mustafa Paşa upon the request of Bayezid II. The mosque has a constantly changing congregation. The last few years in particular, and with the influence of the mosque’s imam, the congregation has been teeming, even during morning prayers. The mosque itself, however, is in need of a restoration.

On both sides of the mosque is a medrese (school). These medreses are currently in use for the purpose of teaching the Quran to both boys and girls and raising hafız (those who memorize the entire Quran). It is an interesting fact that previously in the courtyard facing the türbes were gecekondus (shanty settlements) and some people who did not find these pleasant endeavored to remove them all. In addition to this, they constructed a tea garden and a library, all proceeds of which were to be used for the mosque. Now anyone who visits does not leave without having a glass of tea first. Lastly, in the külliye (social complex) is the Sümbül Sinan Dergah. The dergah was restored by the Fatih Municipal Council this year and was officially opened by Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç. This wooden building is currently used as center that provides classes in classical Islamic arts.

Upon exiting the dergah, one finds streets filled with traces of Sufism and the district’s old Ottoman past.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

As a sign of religious fraternity in Syria, Muslim and Christian chanters shared the Opera House stage on Thursday marking the anniversary of the Birthday of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him).

Damascus: In their first joint presentation, the voices of the members of Tahlila Group for Sufi Chanting and the Christian al-Farah Choir filled the Opera House stage in an special evening of religious songs.

The singers were keen to give their songs a heart and soul touching humanitarian aesthetic character with a sophisticated vocabulary filled with sublime spirituality.

"It is an unquestionable and absolute reality that we are in Syria, Muslims and Christians, are equal regardless of the different paths we walk toward God," said Father Elias Zahlawi, the founder of al-Farah Choir.

"To translate our faith in God," he added, "we must love each other and cooperate to build a worthy humane society."

Leader of Tahlila Group, Mr. Hisham Al-Khatib, for his part, said that the anchoring of the spirit of religious fraternity is one of the primary goals of his group, hoping to organize other such ceremonies and celebrate religious occasions with al-Farah choir in the future.

Founded in 2000, Tahlila Group specialized in Sufi music and recitation seeks to promote the genuine Arab Islamic cultural heritage, particularly in Europe, through a methodology based on modern melodic songs.

As for the al-Farah (Joy) Choir, it first saw the light in 1977 at the hand of Father Elias Zahlawi with a group of 55 children, and has now come to include 500 singers.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Muslim pop stars, who give religious messages in their songs, are very popular on video-sharing websites. While some of the stars were brought up as Muslims, others converted to Islam later in life. Their music has been termed 'green pop' by some, yet the musicians prefer to see their music as fitting more authentically into Muslim musical traditions

Bringing a moral message to their music, a new generation of Muslim singers is following the legendary Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, in smashing album sales and video-sharing records with their religiously themed work.

In addition to the singer Islam, stars such as Sami Yusuf, Hamza Robertson, Zain Bhinka and hip-hop group Native Deen have sold millions of albums. Their music is termed “green pop” by some circles, but they call their style “nasheed” (Muslim vocal music).

Yusuf was born in 1980 in London to a musical family of Iranian Azerbaijanis. At the age of 18, he received a scholarship from one of the world’s most prestigious music institutes, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and gained many fans within a short time around the world, particularly in Muslim countries. He sings in English, Turkish, Arabic and Persian on his albums.

He released his first album, “Al-Mu’allim,” in 2003 and second album, “My Ummah,” in 2005. Later, he performed a concert in Istanbul in 2007 that drew 250,000 people. Yusuf, who has appeared on the cover of many popular magazines, including Time Magazine, is working for young people to be proud of their own identity by providing messages of tolerance and peace in his songs.

Yusuf’s latest album, “Wherever You Are,” which was released in 2010, has also broken sales records. Among his most popular songs are “Al-Mu'allim,” “Hasbi Rabbi,” “You Came To Me,” “Healing,” “My Ummah,” “Eid Song” and “Supplication.”

The singer, who appeared on a list of the world’s 500 most influential Muslims in 2009, has also made his name known with social responsibility projects. He took the stage at the “Muslim Live 8” event which was organized at Wembley in London to help Darfur. Tickets for the concert were sold out.

Yusuf Islam, a.k.a. Cat Stevens

At the beginning of his successful musical career, Stephen Demetre Georgiou assumed the name of Cat Stevens. Born in 1948 as the third child of a Greek father and Swedish mother, Stevens attended Catholic school although his father was Greek Orthodox. He left the school at age 16 and released his first hit song “I Love My Dog” at the age of 18, taking the new moniker when he released his album, “Matthew and Son,” in 1966.

Stevens converted to Islam in 1977 after nearly drowning in an accident. During his recovery from the accident, his brother had given him a copy of the Quran, which he credited with helping him to find peace and recover from the incident. As is customary when one converts to Islam, Stevens changed his name, calling himself Yusuf Islam after the prophet Joseph, interpreter of dreams.

In later years, he left the musical world and asked music companies to no longer distribute his albums but he was rejected. After a public absence of many years, he re-appeared on stage to perform some English-language nasheeds, and has ultimately released another five albums under the name of Yusuf Islam in addition to the 14 he released as Stevens. He is now married with five children and lives in London.

His Arabic song “Taleal Bedru Aleyna” and the English-language “A Is For Allah” broke records on the Internet.

Tom Robertson chose Islam at age 21

Tom Robertson, who was born in Oldham, England, in 1982, took music and drama classes until the age 20 before converting to Islam a year later and changing his name to Hamza. Since then, Robertson has invited many people to Islam through his songs.

Robertson, who turned to Sufism because of his Muslim friends, was discovered by the singer Islam at an event where he performed in London. Known for his support for poor women and children, Robertson released his first album “Something About Life” in 2009 and has become very popular in Turkey and abroad.

The song “Your Beauty,” which he composed with Yusuf, is very popular on video-sharing websites.

Another Muslim pop singer, Zain Bhinka, was born in 1974 in South Africa. He gained success in a song competition in 1994, started making music in 1996 and has since composed many songs with the singer Islam. His albums “Mountains of Makkah,” “Allah Knows,” “1415 The Beginning,” “First We Need Love” and “A Way of Life” are very popular in the Islamic world.

Bhinka’s name dropped like a bombshell in the virtual world with the death of Michael Jackson in 2009 as there were claims that the former’s song, “Give thanks to Allah,” was actually performed by Jackson and that Jackson had converted to Islam before his death. When the truth was revealed, Jackson fans said Bhinka had put the video on the Internet to promote himself. Bhinka remained silent for some time but later said he was not a Jackson fan and that their voices were not similar.

Bhinka has performed concerts in 18 U.S. cities with the support of the North American Islamic Union as well as in his own country, European countries and Australia. He gives priority to television programs for children.

World’s first hip-hop-style nasheeds

Hip-hop, which became a life style for African-Americans at the end of the 1970s in the United States, was the starting point of the band Native Deen, which was formed in 2000 in Washington, D.C.

Naim Mohammed, Joush Salam and Abdul Malik Ahmed, who chose to infuse their hip-hop songs with Islamic messages, became very popular among Muslims living in the U.S. within a very short time.

What makes the group different from other hip-hop musicians is the instruments they play; they use percussion instruments only, as some Muslims believe that playing musical instruments is impermissible in the faith.

The group members have also made common projects with the singer Islam, Bhinka and Yusuf. Their song “Not Afraid to Stand Alone” is a very popular video on the Internet

Picture: Yusuf Islam is among the best-known pop singers in the Islamic world. Photo: HDN.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

These days people in different parts of the world are celebrating memorial of the birth of the prophet Mohammad (Peace be upon Him) in the 12th of Rabiee al Awal Hijri as normal as every year.

Sudan is accustomed to celebrating the festival and it's known that Sudanese people are famous for their love to the prophet (Peace be upon him).

The festival usually starts at the first day of Rabiee al Awal in form of carnivals called Al Molid al Nabaway al Shareef. The festival begins with hype in which Sudaneses people at different levels participate including Sheikhs of Sufi sects, religious scholars, students' unions, workers' associations and police force.

The hype always marches from particular point till it reaches square celebrations.

The celebrations often begins as small session for reciting Koran in addition to religious prophetic praises in addition to symposiums and seminars about the life of Mohammad (Peace be upon him). Different states of Sudan celebrate in the same way.

The celebration square is always surrounded by stalls selling special types of sweet prepared for the occasion. There are many people who have become famous for making sweet. Al Tayeb Sayed Mekki and al Maghrabi are two of the most famous sweet traders and makers in Omdurman.

The most types of sweet made for the occasion are Juzia, Humosia and Alaf which made of sesame and sugar in addition to Lacom sweet (candy). Sweet for children is made in form of tiny statue decorated with colored cellophane paper. It is called Arrossa (bride). Some times it is made in the form of horse or knight.

Sufi sects installed marquees in the middle of square celebration. The marquees are always decorated with flowers. Chants in praise of the prophet (Peace be upon Him) are sung in these marquees. A great drum called Noba always is hit accompanied by praising songs.

The celebration has special flavor in Omdurman particularly in residential areas of Wad Nobaway, Hai al Omda, Hai al Sayed Mekki, Wad Aro, al Rikabiya and al Shuhada. People living these areas participate in the celebration via serving visitors with juice and sweet.

Children, men, women, young people and old people all participate in serving visitors as they believe that such participation is source of bless. They inherited this tradition from their forefathers and they are keen on preserving it.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Mogadishu: At least seven people were killed in Mogadishu Monday after clashes broke out between pro-government Sufi sect militants and Al-Qaeda linked Islamists, officials and witnesses said.

The clashes erupted around Maka Al-Mukarama road where the Sufi militants supporting the government were stationed after heavily armed Shebab fighters attacked their positions.

Both sides claimed victory in the fighting.

"The fighting today was very heavy and we inflicted loses on the enemy. Two of our soldiers were killed and three others injured. We arrested several of their fighters during the fighting," Yonis Ali, spokesman for the Sufi militants told reporters.

Witnesses said five civilians were also killed by stray mortar and heavy artillery shells exchanged during the clashes and medical sources said the number of wounded civilians reached 17.

"I saw five civilians who died in the crossfire, three of them were killed after a heavy artillery shell struck a house in Bakara market, eight others were also injured in the same neighbourhood," witness Hussein Wardhigley said.

The clashes came after remarks by Defence Minister Abdihakin Haji Mohamud Fiqi vowing to eliminate Shebab militants from the country.

"We have given opportunities of negotiations to the Shebab elements; unfortunately they have failed to benefit from their chances and... we will eliminate them from the country. From now on, we will put all of our forces together to fight them," Fiqi told reporters in Mogadishu.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The circle of men falls silent. A string of prayer beads swings from the creased hand of a gray-bearded sheikh, all else is still. For an instant the circle seems to hold its breath.

“Ya lateef, ya lateef,” chants the sheikh. The voice of a young boy bursts in with it, “Ya lateef, ya lateef.” Devotion is flying from 30 or so sets of lungs, filling every corner of the Mosque of Muhieddine Ibn ‘Arabi in Salihiyyeh, in the foothills of Mount Qasyoun.

This is the Sufi dhikr (remembrance) and the men in the circle are sending out a chant of devotion at the Muhieddine Ibn ‘Arabi mosque.

“They are connecting with God from the very center of their hearts,” says Ahmad Al Mujahid, one of the circle's leaders.

As the chant gathers momentum, the energy swirling around the circle is almost palpable. Some are rocking back and forth, their palms upturned towards the sky, with tightly shut eyes and intense expressions on their faces. The chant rolls on, faster and faster, louder and louder. Then, whoosh, and silence descends.

This singing, like the other chants, draws words from the Quran and hadith. Ahmad says that the participants sing themselves into a state of fitra, where they feel their primordial nature - the original way that God made them.

Less than five meters from the dhikr circle lies a tomb of great power. According to Sheikh Muhammad, it is the Damascus equivalent of the Kaa’ba. Pilgrims journey to say a prayer, ask for a cure for sickness, help with hardship or just bask in its presence.

It is the Muhieddine Ibn ‘Arabi tomb, more commonly known as Ibn ‘Arabi to English speakers, or Al Sheikh Al Akbar (The Greatest Master) to Sufis. He is a saint, philosopher, mystic, poet, traveler and sage of universal importance to Sufism.

Born in the 12th Century, with a body of work stretching to 15,000 pages, he has inspired philosophers from China to Europe - from Daoists to Dante.

Sheikh Muhammad Al Yaqoubi is a Syrian scholar and Sufi descended from the prophet Muhammad. Formerly the Mufti of Sweden, he now lives in Damascus and gives a weekly Friday speech at the mosque.

“Attachment to God is a work of the heart,” he says. “The heart is detached from everything except God in the dhikr.”

He says that Ibn ‘Arabi is present in the tomb, listening to the pilgrims who visit the mosque.

“They cannot hear his replies because of the veil that separates humans from the world of spirits and djinn. Only great Gnostics can perceive him.”

Some Fridays, though, believers report seeing Ibn ‘Arabi. Participants in the ceremony have been known to see a beam of light projecting from his tomb to the dhikr. One Friday, Sheikh Muhammad forgot to include the Fatiha (the opening verse of the Quran) in his evening speech, as he usually does. “Ibn ‘Arabi appeared to me in the audience and reminded me! I had to stop and say the Fatiha!”

Andalusian Spain of the late 12th Century was a mix of religions, managing relative harmony among the followers of various faiths. From an early age, Ibn ‘Arabi saw the underlying unity of the three monotheistic faiths. According to Sheikh Muhammad, Ibn ‘Arabi saw in them not difference, but a single shared essence. The same is true of Damascus, he says.

“In Damascus, people of different religions have always known how to live together. From an early age we learn to distinguish our religions and ourselves, but not to hate other religions. We respect each other’s right to live together, and to share land, air and food. In this respect, Syria presents a model for the west on dealing with minorities.”

More than 770 years after Ibn ‘Arabi was laid in his tomb, a line from his poetry gives expression to a sentiment that resonates to this day in the dhikr. It resonates with people, regardless of faith:

“By God, I feel so much love that it seems the skies would be rent asunder, the stars fall and the mountains move away if I burdened them with it: such is my experience of love.”

Participation in the dhikr is recommended to all Muslims regardless of denomination (Sheikh Muhammad calls it the tissue of Islam). Anyone is welcome at the tomb of Ibn ‘Arabi, and men of all faiths can observe the dhikr every Friday after the Maghrib prayer (a little after 4:30 pm).

Sheikh Muhammad al Yaqoubi gives a speech every Friday at the mosque after Asha’ prayer (just after 6 pm). He will begin classes on Sufi mysticism in English in coming months.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Tripoli: The second Sufi conference has kicked off in the Libyan capital Tripoli with a call to all Sufists to spread the word of Sufism all over the world since it is the most acknowledged path for the betterment of the humanity and the spread of Islam.

Speaking at the opening ceremony at the World Islamic Call Society Headquarters, the Secretary General of WICS - Doctor Muhammad Ahmad Sharif appealed to the participants to preach to people and children in particular the importance of Sufism and how it can lead to the betterment of the whole humanity.

He also appealed to all Muslims in the whole world to be tolerant, peaceful and also to follow peaceful ways to solve their own problems.

The conference which has attracted about one thousand SUFI followers from all corners of the world is under the theme "Recommend One Another to the Truth " and has been organized by The World Islamic Call Society in conjunction with the International Forum for Sufism.

In this conference, great Islamic researchers and Academicians are to discuss three major topics and these are: "The role of Sufism in Islamic Propagation", "the Sufi Social role" and "Its approach to other Faiths".

Israel-Libya: Libyan leader Mouammar Kadhafi has said there should be no recognition for Israel until the Palestinian issue is resolved.

Speaking on Sunday evening, during the commemoration of the birth of Prophet Mohamed, he said: 'We should not recognize the Zionist entity until the issue of the Palestinian people is resolved, that all Palestinian refugees return home and a single democratic state is created.'

The Libyan leader noted that the Arab world is currently experiencing a popular revolutionary movement, which must lead the Palestinians to march peacefully from the refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Libya and Jordan and others to Palestine.

He urged the Palestinians to camp on the borders of Palestine, even if the Israelis prevent them from entering.

He also called on Palestinians in the Diaspora to move by boats in the direction of their country and, in case they are prevented from entering, they should settle on the shores and thus create a situation of global crisis that the international community will be forced to address.

Heads of Muslim brotherhoods Sufi and Murid scholars and their devotees representing 90 ways of Sufism in 76 countries from different continents of the world, several kings, sultans, princes and traditional leaders in Africa attended the ceremony.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Islamabad: Famous poet Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum’s death anniversary observed on Monday. His lyrics still live as these are beyond death.

Tabassum was born in Amritsar on August 4, 1899. He then joined Islamia College for his Master’s degree in Persian. In 1927, he joined the Central Training College, Lahore, as a Lecturer, where he worked then till 1931, private news channel reported.

In 1931, he joined Government College, Lahore, from where he retired as Head of the Persian Department in 1954. During this period he matured into a great poet, critic and teacher. He taught three generations of students, including Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Noon Meem Rashid and Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi.

Ali Mohammad Saberi said: "In this session, Saadi\'s stance, his main ideas and the mystery of his grandeur from mysticism and Islamic perspective will be surveyed."The lecturers of this session are Seyyed Hassan Shahrestani, professor at Honar University, and Mahdi Kiayi, Mowlana researcher.

Saberi asserted that these sessions by no means deal with Saadi from literary point of view. He added: "Many critics have studied Saadi from literary perspectives yet in this session we are not going to talk about his poetic diction or lyrical poetry."

He continued: "Also we are not going to have a psychological approach to Saadi, although he is the peak of Persian Qazal. Our purpose, however, is to deal with his mysticism and the horizon of Saadi\'s ideologies in Islamic Sufism."

He emphasized: "Yet we should bear in mind that Saadi has learnt literature from Sheikh Sohrevardi who has been a renowned mystic of the time. Therefore his literature is originated from mysticism."

He also referred to the analysis of Golistan and Boustan of Saadi during these sessions and added: "Saadi\'s Golistan is a book of ethics and mysticism. This session will, to some extent, deal with moral aspects of his poetry and some particular tales."

The session \'Mystery of Saadi\'s grandeur in Islamic mysticism\' will be held at the House of Literati on Wednesday 9 February from 16:30 to 18:30 with the presence of experts and enthusiasts.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

By TOI Staff Reporter, *Sufi Rang Festival to start from Feb 9* - The Times Of India - India; Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Ajmer: The third international Sufi Rang Festival is set to begin from February 9, and will continue till February 16. The festival is organised by the Chishty Foundation at the Ajmer dargah.

In a media briefing Salman Chishty of the Chishty foundation said, "Nearly 400 paintings depicting the teachings of Sufism will be organized at the mehfil khana of the dargah. Devotees and artists from Europe and Asia will be participating in the programme," said Salman.

A group from Singapore and artistes from Tamil Nadu will perform kalams in the dargah. The various performances at the festival will illustrate the teachings of Sufi saints.

Friday, February 18, 2011

The Egyptian revolution brought down a brutal tyrant using only non-violent means. In doing so, they have not only begun the process of changing Egypt, but perhaps of changing the world. They have given hope to many, and they have reminded many of previous non-violent struggles.

This was not an al Qaeda perversion of jihad, but a true Islamic, spiritual jihad - a struggle for freedom and justice. Because it was a non-violent movement, the Egyptian people have won the hearts of people around the world, and have inspired people around the world to struggle to achieve and/or retain freedom and democracy.

Abdal Hakim Murad wrote in 2002 *Islamic Spirituality: The Forgotten Revolution* ... The Islamic movement has so far been remarkably unsuccessful. We must ask ourselves how it is that a man like Nasser, a butcher, a failed soldier and a cynical demagogue, could have taken over a country as pivotal as Egypt, despite the vacuity of his beliefs, while the Muslim Brotherhood, with its pullulating millions of members, should have failed, and failed continuously, for six decades. The radical accusation of a failure in methodology cannot fail to strike home in such a context of dismal and prolonged inadequacy. ... At this critical moment in our history, the umma has only one realistic hope for survival, and that is to restore the ‘middle way’, defined by that sophisticated classical consensus which was worked out over painful centuries of debate and scholarship. That consensus alone has the demonstrable ability to provide a basis for unity. But it can only be retrieved when we improve the state of our hearts, and fill hem with the Islamic virtues of affection, respect, tolerance and reconciliation. This inner reform, which is the traditional competence of Sufism, is a precondition for the restoration of unity in the Islamic movement. The alternative is likely to be continued, and agonising, failure.?

When I saw people praying calmly while water hoses were being aimed at them by the military, I knew in my heart that these people were engaged in a spiritual enterprise.

Shahed Amanullah in an article about one of my heroes, Badshah Khan of Afghanistan *asked a question* Could Badshah Khan’s tactics work in modern-day conflicts in the Muslim world - Palestine, Kashmir, or Chechnya? Perhaps nonviolence isn’t relevant in an age of smart bombs and cruise missiles, but the answer won’t be certain unless someone tries it.

What we have seen in Egypt answers this question in the affirmative. Yes, non-violent tactics can work, and in fact may be the only tactics that will work. The Egyptians have tried it and it works.

Badshah Khan asked of his followers in their struggle to remove British colonial occupation from India and Afghanistan that they take the following oath: I am a Servant of God, and as God needs no service, but serving his creation is serving him, I promise to serve humanity in the name of God. I promise to refrain from violence and from taking revenge. I promise to forgive those who oppress me or treat me with cruelty. I promise to refrain from taking part in feuds and quarrels and from creating enmity. I will live in accordance with the principles of nonviolence. I will serve all God’s creatures alike; and my object shall be the attainment of the freedom of my country and my religion. I will never desire any reward whatever for my service. All my efforts shall be to please God, and not for any show or gain. *Badshah Khan: The forgotten Muslim hero, Chan’ad Bahraini*

The young people in Egypt may not have ever heard of Badshah Khan, but they followed his principles.

When the pictures were televised of the water canons being aimed at protestors I thought of the same sort of images I had seen during the civil rights struggle in America. All through the last month since the revolution started in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, many scenes brought back strong mental images of memories from the anti-war and civil rights movements in my own country, and of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. This revolution made me think often of Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Abdul Gaffar Khan, and other heroic figures who brought about change through non-violent means.

And, I am not alone in this, a veteran of the Selma March saw the parallels: As I watched the television footage of demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square make the decision to reduce the violence going on around them by sitting down in the street when word came that thugs from the Mubarak regime were on the way to break up their rally, I was reminded of how it felt in the spring of 1965 to be part of the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march. What we are witnessing in Egypt should not seem strange to Americans. For it is nothing less than Egypt’s version of the kind of protest that permanently changed our way of life more than 45 years ago. *How nonviolent protest defeats injustice, Nicolaus Mills*

People in India saw in this a reflection of Ghandi’s movement This is Egyptians moment to transform their country. As they continue to struggle for a more just and peaceful Egypt, we look from a far with the conviction that there is no greater joy than seeing people take to the streets and in the spirit of non violence exercising their freedom of speech to call for the end of the Mubarak regime. Thank you Egyptians for touching our hearts and making the world believe in the power of the human spirit. Thank you for the message of non violence, civil disobedience, determination, inspiration, peace, justice, faith, love and dignity. It is through this message that a new Egypt will rise. There will be pro-Mubarak supporters trying to take advantage of this situation and trying to sabotage the dream and aspirations of ordinary Egyptians, but that is too late. The violence that they have used against the peaceful demonstrators will not stop the millions of people that are in the streets. This revolution is going forward and will continue to advance until Mubarak steps down. There is no other alternative. The world is watching and stands on the side of the millions of peaceful demonstrators. *Egyptian revolution has been televised*

In thinking about the momentous events of the past month, I am also struck by a number of amazing achievements and unique aspects of this revolution:

First, that this revolution could never have succeeded if the people had chosen violence as their tactic. This would have made it easy for Mubarak to crush the revolution violently and justify that action to the rest of the world - “you see, they made me do it”. The ordinary people could not have won a military victory, but they were able to win a moral victory. What is very different today than in such struggles of the past is that the revolution was televised and tweeted and texted and posted on Facebook. Those of us who were following events were getting instant reports, photographs, and commentary from people who were right in the center of what was going on.

Second, the Egyptian people through their courageous and noble behavior changed the image not only of Egyptians but also of Arabs and of Muslims. They won hearts and minds and broke stereotypes. Even journalists like Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, and Anderson Cooper came away from Tahrir Square in awe of what the Egyptian people were attempting to accomplish.

Third, the Egyptian people have struck a blow against the deviant view of the meaning of jihad taught by groups like Al Qaeda who believe that violence is the only way to achieve anything. The Egyptian people have proved that change is possible through non-violent means. This is going to make it very difficult for groups like al Qaeda to justify their violence as a legitimate means to an end.

Fourth, the Egyptian people have forced many other autocratic rulers to consider that their own authority may be on shaky ground, and we are seeing many taking pre-emptive steps to improve the lot of their people before they too face revolutions.

Fifth, the Egyptian people have reminded many in America and other countries of the west that whatever influence they might have in a world of equals will be based on living up to their ideals. They have also reminded Americans that we are currently in a situation where we have lost many of the freedoms that previous generations won through struggle, and we need to regain and protect these freedoms.

Bob Herbert sees this as a call for Americans to *return to their democratic ideals*: The Egyptians want to establish a viable democracy, and that’s a long, hard road. Americans are in the mind-bogglingly self-destructive process of letting a real democracy slip away. I had lunch with the historian Howard Zinn just a few weeks before he died in January 2010. He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S. but not at all daunted. “If there is going to be change,” he said, “real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves.” I thought of that as I watched the coverage of the ecstatic celebrations in the streets of Cairo.

Sixth, the Egyptian people have achieved much already, and done this without a coherent leadership. This may be the first time that such a non-violent revolution has been carried out without a strong and respected leader. However, going forward they will need to establish a leadership team that they feel comfortable having speak on their behalf, or too many voices will possibly give an opening to the military or other forces to say they have no one to negotiate with. Even a populist movement needs leadership.

WHAT NEXT?

What has been accomplished to date is monumental, but much remains to do. Two days ago Mubarak was forced to resign. Today, the military agreed to disband the parliament and to suspend the constitution which achieves two more goals of the protestors.

However, the military also said that they plan to rule by martial law for the next six months. They have retained Mubarak’s cabinet to oversee the transition. They have not agreed to disband the emergency powers, or to release political prisoners (including as many as 1,000 protestors arrested since the protests began). Unless the emergency powers are removed, the protestors stand the risk of being picked off one by one and arrested or disappeared. They have not agreed to allow the establishment of a civilian interim government. They show no sign of including representatives of the protestors or anyone else to participate in decision making. It was *reported today* that “An army source said the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will ban meetings by labor unions or professional syndicates, effectively forbidding strikes, and tell people to get back to work.” It seems as if the military elite who are all part of the old Mubarak regime are making only cosmetic changes, and will themselves decide who will be in power and who will be allowed to rewrite the constitution. The Mubarak regime is still in power, only the figurehead is gone. If that is the case, then it is much too early to rejoice.

In a previous article I used a metaphor from Egyptian mythology to refer to Hosni Mubarak and his regime as *scorpions*. I can’t help viewing the Egyptian military in terms of that same mythology. In Egyptian mythology, Sobek was a huge, fierce beast sometimes depicted as a man with a crocodile’s head. He was associated with negative aspects of human nature like deceit, duplicity, passion, and betrayal. A very dangerous creature indeed.

The actions of the Egyptian military remind me of an enormous crocodile lurking in the waters of the Nile. During the time of the people’s revolution in Egypt, the military have remained submerged and silent. The ripples of their presence and underwater movements are visible on the surface of the water. It is a very real presence, but it has not yet given clear indications of whether or not it will come out of the water to sun on the banks of the river or to strike viciously at the people on the bank of the river.

In order to achieve their goal of true freedom and democracy, the people of Egypt will need to be vigilant and focused, and all the freedom loving people will have to remain ready to help them in whatever way we can.

[Click the title of this article to the original article which has many *links* and references (ed.)]

Thursday, February 17, 2011

The New Cambridge History of Islam is a work of breathtaking scholarship that does justice to one of the world's great religions, says Noel Malcolm

For the British media, a major scholarly event is like the proverbial small earthquake in Chile: “not many dead”, which means that it is hardly newsworthy at all. The publication of The New Cambridge History of Islam is, despite the potentially inflammatory subject matter, unlikely to lead to any deaths, or even death threats; this is a work of scholarship, not polemics. Yet for those interested in the Islamic world, the appearance of this multi-volume work really is a landmark event, deserving all the public attention and acclamation it can get.

The original Cambridge History of Islam came out in 1970, in two fat volumes. One of them covered the “Central Islamic Lands” (mainly the Middle East) from the origins of Islam to the present; the other dealt with the West, Africa, and the other parts of Asia. The contributors were leading experts, but their chapters were mostly rather simplified narratives, aimed at the general reader and almost footnote-free. And the version of history that was being simplified was in some cases a standard view already long established in the textbooks.

What a lot can change in four decades! For a start, the NCHI is three times the size of the old one, with six volumes of roughly 800 pages each. Footnotes abound, and so do lengthy reading lists; the contributions are plugged into ongoing academic debates, in a way that the chapters in the old Cambridge History did not seem to be. But while it’s true that an ordinary individual reader will find the price tag of the NCHI prohibitive, this is not a work for academic libraries alone. Every good public library should have it.

The huge difference in length between this work and its predecessor is only partly explained, though, by the fact that it is intended for academics as well as general readers. The main reason is that the last two generations have witnessed an extraordinary expansion of knowledge in the field of Islamic studies. Areas such as Central Asian history, or topics such as the spread of Islam in West Africa, or the peculiarities of Indonesian Islam, have been the targets of barrages of monographs; the NCHI is a first attempt to map out a whole new landscape of knowledge.

If those topics sound somehow peripheral, there has also been original work on some of the central features of Islamic faith and practice. Look up “Sufis” in the indexes of the old Cambridge History, and you will find a few scattered references here and there. That reflected the standard view, in which Islam was “official Islam”, a religion celebrated in mosques, and run by imams and muftis; Sufism was some sort of exotic appendage, a minor optional extra for the mystically inclined.

In the NCHI, on the other hand, one finds a lengthy chapter on the early development of Sufism, another one on Sufism and “Neo-Sufism” in the modern age, and multiple references to the Sufi orders or brotherhoods throughout the work. These orders, with their revered leaders, their traditions of personal instruction and their own special forms of worship, have been a major part of the fabric of religious life in most Muslim societies, accepted and valued by almost everyone (except the intolerant Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia). Yet only recently have outside scholars begun to appreciate the role they have played.

But while modern scholarly work has added hugely to our knowledge of Islam, it has performed what might be called subtractions as well as additions. Until the 1970s, almost every account of the origins of Islam accepted the basic story told by the Muslims themselves – a story derived from the Koran, the hadiths (canonical traditions about Mohammed and his teachings) and the writings of medieval Islamic chroniclers and biographers. In the late 1970s, however, a number of Western experts (including Michael Cook, who is the general editor of the NCHI) challenged the consensus, arguing that there was virtually no reliable textual evidence from the earliest period: the text of the Koran had crystallised quite slowly, the hadiths were expressions of later views, and the chroniclers had themselves lacked authentic materials for their histories.

This is a battlefield from which the smoke has not yet cleared. The account of early Islam in the first volume of the NCHI is a cautious, proviso-laden version of the traditional story; near the end of that volume, a special chapter (no less cautious) is devoted to the modern debates; and elsewhere in the work, individual writers take a variety of positions. Some good points are made in favour of trusting elements of the traditional version; but, as Professor Chase Robinson observes, “the authenticity of nearly all documents from the early period is impossible to verify”.

No doubt this Cambridge History too will be replaced, one day, by a bigger and better one. The fascinating chapters it offers on thematic and cultural subjects (such as women and sexuality, “the city and the nomad”, or religious conversion) make one long for more of the same: why no chapter on slavery in Islam, for example, or on the history of the hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca)? And perhaps a new edition might find a little more to say about the indigenous Muslims of Europe; Bosnia gets just a couple of pages here, roughly the same amount as the history of Muslim immigrants in Canada.

But these are small cavils. I have spent nearly a month reading these volumes, and have learned a huge amount – not least, from the final volume, about the background to the various forms of present-day “political Islam”. And I finish reading them impressed by two things: the way in which Islam itself has held together as a religion, stretched across multiple states and cultures with no Pope or hierarchical Church to maintain it; and the way in which this team of scholars has condensed so much learning, with such clarity, into a mere 4,929 pages.

The New Cambridge History of IslamEd by Michael Cook et alCAMBRIDGE, £650, six vols, 4,929ppAvailable from Telegraph Books + 44(0)844 871 1516

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

By Atul Sethi, *One moment in history – February 5, 1927* - The Times of India - India; Sunday, February 6, 2011

In a corner of Delhi's Nizamuddin basti, not far from the dargah of 14th century Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya, stands a whitewashed building. It is a dargah too, but Dilliwallahs and Indians in general may not know it.

Inside its immaculately maintained and quiet interiors, visitors are insulated from the chaos of the locality and the wider world. The dargah is the final resting place of Sufi mystic and musician Hazrat Inayat Khan.

His death in Delhi, 84 years ago, is marked by a three-day Urs, and is attended by followers from around the world. It is a fitting celebration of the life and times of a man, who many believe, pioneered the spread of Sufism to the West.

Hazrat Inayat Khan's story is interesting because he exported a pacifist strand of Islam, much before the West started to equate the religion with radicalism. In keeping with Sufi tradition, Inayat Khan preached tauhid or oneness of being, often using his songs to teach. It helped that he was a trained classical musician, who was hailed for his singing style by many including the Nizam of Hyderabad, who conferred the title of 'Tansen' on him.

Theologian Karin Jironet's book on Inayat Khan records that "he came from an illustrious family of musicians that traced its lineage to Tipu Sultan. His maternal grandfather, Maula Bakhsh was a renowned rudra veena player who taught him the rudiments of classical singing at an early age." She terms "the relationship between the young Inayat and his father as rather reserved ."

Even so, his father is believed to have been a profound influence on the young Inayat's spiritual temperament, particularly his simple philosophy on remorse and self-satisfaction . The young boy was taught "neki kar paani mein daal, badi kar pallu me baandh (Do good and forget about it, but always remember your misdeeds).

But Inayat Khan's greatest influence was his teacher, Shaikh Abu Hashim Madani, who initiated him in the ancient Sufi Chishti Order. Farida Ali, representative of the Hazrat Inayat Khan Trust in Delhi says he followed his teacher's instructions and travelled to Europe and the United States in 1910. "The next sixteen years saw the blossoming of a Sufi tradition associated with him," she says.

The West found Inayat Khan's message appealing, as long-time mureed or follower Nawab Pasnak explains. The essence of his teachings is reflected in the symbol adopted by the international Sufi movement he initiated — a heart with wings and a crescent and star in the centre. "This is symbolic of a heart, which, responding to the knowledge of the divine, gets wings and is liberated ," says Pasnak.

The ongoing Urs celebration, which happens every year at the dargah, emphasizes the message with qawwalis that reflect the age-old Chisti tradition of sama or spreading sukoon or peace through musical events. Ironically, the Urs draws followers from around the globe but has only a limited attendance from India. Farida Ali says the irony lies chiefly in the fact that "Hazrat sahab could not reach out to people in India despite having a great desire to do so."

Is it time for India to know one of its famously spiritual sons a little better? Nearly 90 years after Inayat Khan's death, his remedy for a world afflicted by negativism and hatred is increasingly relevant in this, his signature message: "All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony. And harmony is best given by producing harmony in one's own life."

Khartoum-Mona Al-Bashir:President Al Bashir has underlined that the identity of the Sudan has been settled and the Islam has become the official religion of the State, adding that the peoples of the Sudan are 98% Muslims.

“The new state in the North is the second republic and it is the Salvation in new phase,” aired the president.

Addressing the 'Support Gathering yesterday at Al Kabbashi area of Khartoum North, refuted the claim that the National Congress Party (NCP) was behind the breakaway of the South, noting that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement had allowed the people of the South the right of self-determination and simultaneously stressed the right of the North to enforce the Islamic Sharia.

“The issues of the South is political and has begun long before the Salvation regime," voiced Al Bashir, adding that the Salvation has sacrificed the best of her sons in the war, a thing which was not done by any other northern political power.

According to him, the Islamic Sharia has legitimized the presence of the NCP on the Sudanese political arena, referring to the overwhelming success of the party in the recent elections to re-assume power supported by 90% of the Sudanese peoples.

He assured the gathering that the Sudan economy would not be negatively impacted by south Sudan secession, as oil in the North is more than that in the South, besides, gold. “We have surplus of cement which we can export, we will also export sugar and promote agricultural produce,” Bashir said.

During the occasion the Sects handed over to the president a Document of Covenant signed by nine sect leaders. The document underscored that the Sufi sects, across the board in the Sudan, would work for bolstering the social fabric, backup the Islamic discourse and support the president, praising the Islamic achievements he accomplished.

The document added that the Sufi sects have a remarkable role in entrenching the principles and philosophy of Islam in the Sudan at large and Darfur in particular.

Sufi sects lauded the President's call for forming broad-based government in order to confront current challenges. Sufis movements called on all national political forces as well as NGOs to unify their stances, in order to achieve stability and peace all over Sudan and moreover to prevent hostile forces from shattering peace in the country. Sufi sects and leaders of Sufis have supported the tolerant religious attitudes allover the country.

Governor of Khartoum, Dr. Abdul Rahman El Khidir affirmed that Sects have played tangible role in spreading of Islam in Sudan, renewing his support to President Al Bashir.

Minister of Religious Affairs and Endowment Azhari al Tijani said that al Kabashi area is full of religious symbols, adding that the meeting gathering the highest leadership in the country with Sufi Sects, reflects national solidarity in coincidence with secession of south Sudan, affirming that the mother-state in the north will stay coherent and it will cooperate with the newly-born state in the south.

He added that the meeting sends message to the whole world that Sudanese people back their leadership strongly, adding that the leadership has come from within the grassroots of Sudanese people.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Islamabad: The rising tide of extremism, terrorism and intolerance can be defeated only with the Sufi message of love and peace, said President of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) women wing president Faryal Talpur.

“At present, Pakistani society is in a state of decay and degradation and this trend can be reversed by following the teachings of mystics,”, she said during her visit to the National Book Foundation on Friday.

She called upon intellectuals, writers and the media to play their roles in confronting the country’s social, ethical and educational challenges. She urged them to use their pen to reacquaint the young generation with the “golden traditions” that have been trampled upon.

She said we should all be ready to make sacrifices for the truth and stressed the dire need for educating children with books that inculcate character building, sense of responsibility and respect for the law.

Earlier she took a round of the book shop of the Foundation. The NBF managing Director Mazharul Islam briefed her about the various projects that the NBF had launched in the last two years, including book clubs and libraries in jails, railway stations and villages, to promote a culture of book reading.

The celebrated pioneer of Urdu poetry, Meer Taqi Meer (1723 - 1810), is believed to have recited these lines when taunted by the upstarts of Lucknow and asked about his antecedents. Meer had migrated from a Mughal Delhi in decline — it had been plundered twice in his lifetime, first by Nadir Shah Afshar in 1739 and then nine years later by Ahmed Shah Durrani — to what was then an upwardly mobile province of Awadh ruled by Nawab Asaf ud Daula.

When Zarina Hashmi returns from a post-9/11 New York to an aspiring and ambitious 21st century New Delhi with these once-well-known lines, there is an element of irony that is hard to miss. Zarina could be addressing this inheritance of loss to both; New Delhi and New York. Swamped by recent migrants, post-Partition New Delhi has long abandoned its best ever cultural construct, i.e. the Urdu language and its poetry. New York, in the wake of terrorism and the resultant Islamophobia, is struggling to keep its best ideal, i.e. the promise of freedom of speech and worship in a constitutional democracy.

In her movingly written Conversation with my Self, she says: “I chose Urdu not for the beauty of the calligraphy or the exoticism of its aesthetics. I was placing my work in a historical moment, capturing a time when one wrote and read in Urdu. Urdu was born in Delhi; Amir Khusrau called it Hindawi, the language of Hindustan. Now we are witnessing the slow death of this language in the same city.”

So is Zarina's art political? It could well be in so far as any work of art or thought provokes a spirit of inquiry into the state of the present. And when she looks around her she finds there is enough to question “the very notion of safety, security and refuge”.[2] But Zarina proclaims no manifesto. Hers is a voice that raises oblique queries but refrains from making any final pronouncements. She takes her tactic from the medieval Sufis who spurred inquiry into mathematics, astronomy, mysticism, metaphysics, music and poetry and in doing so subverted the religious and political establishments of the day in favour of inclusion of the popular and the marginal. If ilm (knowledge), ishq (love) and haal (ecstasy) were their spectacular modes of protest and enlightenment, Zarina combines all three in her meditative art.

By superimposing these lines of Meer in handwritten nasta'liq script as a visual device within her highly refined art practice, Zarina also in a sense de-schools the quotation from its more literal readings. This de-contextualisation expands the scope of application, as it were. Not many viewers of her art would be able to read the lines; fewer still would know the context. Yet even at the purely retinal level, the image — of the skeletal road map of Delhi with the lines in nasta'liq squarely suspended on it — makes for its own reading. It appears to be a spider's web of memory that has trapped a fluttering moth of remorse. It becomes a more universal signifier where the visual form spells its own narrative of calm disquiet.

Mirza Ghalib

Meer is not the only poet from Delhi that Zarina invokes in her work. She also refers to the greatest of them all, Mirza Ghalib (1797- 1869). In a personal email to me she quotes a line from Ghalib “ sambhalne de mujhe ae na-umeedi kya qayaamat hai/ke daamaan-e-kheyal-e-yaar chhoota jaaye hai mujh se — let me steady myself, O hopelessness! What a disaster this is! That even the vestment of the thought of my beloved is slipping away from me.” Like Meer, Ghalib too had witnessed the devastation of Delhi, this time during the ghadar (mutiny) of 1857 when the British deposed the last Mughal Emperor Bahadurshah Zafar. With the Partition of India in 1947, both Delhi and Zarina witnessed the painful breaking up of not only families but also of a whole culture and a way of life yet all over again. So she understands the civilisational costs of conflict deeply and personally.

It is useful to recall here that Zarina begins conceiving a work “not with an image but a word” in her mind. Much of art and poetry, and certainly all politics, centres on the valorisation of the place called ‘home' and the metaphor of ‘shelter'. She has cryptically remarked in an interview: “Home is the centre of my universe; I make a home wherever I am. My home is my hiding place - a house with four walls, sometimes four wheels.”[3]

Zarina chose to live and work in New York in the mid-1970s after years of transits between the capitals of the world. There were personal reasons behind the choice. Her diplomat husband Saad Hashmi had died suddenly while still young and her father Sh. Abdur Rashid, a professor of History at Aligarh University, had migrated to Karachi in 1959 where her sister still lives. New York offered the opportunity to work as an artist and keep in touch with her family in Pakistan. She had no home to call her own and used to look out for ‘Spaces to Rent'. Later, that transformed into a work titled Spaces to Hide. Within a few years this engagement with the poetics of home/ shelter resulted in a seminal series of works with cast paper pulp and wood block print on handmade paper titled variously as Spaces to Hide, Corner, Homecoming, Home is a Foreign Place et al.

While working out these concepts intellectually and artistically she was also devising new techniques and methods of making, casting, sizing and printing of paper to give form and materiality to her imagination.[3] Although Zarina has worked as a sculptor with other materials like bronze, steel and wood, she is primarily a printmaker and her favourite medium remains paper. Paper, as she asserts, is like skin: “It can be stained, pierced and moulded and it still has the capability of breathing and aging. It has a fragility and resilience that lasts through time.”

In India, many of these works were shown at Gallery Espace in 2007 in an exhibition evocatively titled kagaz ke ghar or Paper Houses. Apart from the play on words (recalling the phrase “a house of cards” in English; and Guru Dutt's classic “Kagaz ke Phool” in Hindi/Urdu cinema), in that exhibition Zarina had used a line from Ghalib in Urdu: “ be dar-o-deewar sa ik ghar banaaya chaahiye” meaning “make a house without doors or walls”. In the context of Zarina's Single, Self-made, Muslim, Woman of Indian Origin status the next line of the couplet is worth recalling too. Ghalib wrote: bedar-o-deewar sa ik ghar banaaya chaahiye/koi hamsaaya na ho aur paasbaan koi na ho (Make (me) a house without doors or walls /no need for a companion, no sentry required). In her radiant realm of a wall-less self-celebrated solitude, Zarina realises full autonomy as an artist and a woman.

In many works over the last decade or more, Zarina keeps returning to the notion of the ‘self' in transience through time and place. She seems to have so internalised the ‘act of journeying' that it manifests in her work in multiple ways. So from the “line drawn across her heart” that divides India and Paksitan, to the places she visited with her sister (as in “Travels with Rani”), to cities she had lived in or travelled through or had seen in conflict (as in “Cities, Countries and Borders”) — all make for an opus of works on paper that weave a vulnerable thread of personal history within the harsher grid of geopolitical time-space. “I continued to work with not just maps that had personal significance but also maps of regions plagued by ethnic conflicts,” she writes. In the stillness of her studio, the experience of a place and a time seems to crystallise through a process of reduction and renunciation that could be informed by both Sufi thought and Zen practice.

Zen influence

Zarina had studied wood block printing and travelled widely in Japan in 1974 and the influence of the profound monochromatic minimalist Zen aesthetic resonates in her work. In fact, she is the rare odd artist of Indian origin who manages to intuitively conceive an aesthetic that is shorn of clutter, chaos and ornamentation. This is a trait that distinguishes her from most art emanating from the Indian subcontinent. Her display of an amazing leap of imagination or a dazzling flash of technique is invariably tempered by an equally great sense of restraint. There is austerity and starkness in her articulation, but there is also an intense clarity of tone and warmth of timbre. Her visual haikus encapsulate whole narratives of experience, of memory, or just an abstract emotion or even a fleeting feeling … and with such intelligence and economy of expression.

Zarina's passion for geometry is palpable. Geometry, says Zarina, is “sacred practice”. Indeed, virtually all her major work is based on basic geometric forms: the square, the circle and the triangle. As a much travelled and well exposed artist she cannot be oblivious to the trajectory of geometric abstraction that European art history traces from the constructivists to Kazimir Malevich to Josef Albers and beyond. Yet Zarina's art manages to remain resolutely rooted in the Indo-Persian tradition through abstracted images and forms of step wells, niches and arches; through Urdu poetry and through personal history. This tradition has developed concepts for division of space - both private and public - invariably in relation to nature and the concept of paradise (bahisht). So, there is a God-made/man-made; worldly/other-worldly; nature/culture dialectic happening there which puts Zarina's practice of the Sacred Geometry in an orbit of its own.

More recently, Zarina has delved into the concept of noor, or divine light, in Sufism. Like a faquir or darvesh in throes of ecstasy, she lets go of her habitual reserve and splashes and splurges extravagantly with pure gold. Having lived in India and Thailand, she associates gold with the divine and the auspicious. Using 22 carat gold leaf she gilds strings of wooden beads shaped to resemble a giant tasbih (rosary/prayer beads), or she makes large hanging paper screens that are cut or sliced in geometric grids, or woven like a mat, or she casts paper pulp into tablets that have been notched or pierced ... The effect is pure magic.

Completing the binary, Zarina explores the idea of darkness with a mesmerising diptych titled “Dark Night of the Soul” made with black obsidian and Sumi ink on laminated BFK paper. The most iconic work in this exhibition is titled “Blinding Light”. This is a large vertical screen fully gilded with gold leaf, divided in a grid and cut with thin slits. Zarina says: “I have used gold leaf off and on in my practice. I used it sparingly. I thought a screen of this size in gold might be garish; I put it off until it became necessary (my emphasis) to express... The title, “Blinding Light”, was inspired by the legend of Moses asking God to reveal himself. God warned him that he would not be able to stand the light of his presence but Moses insisted. When God revealed himself Moses fainted and the surrounding hills and bushes burned…” Invested with a lifetime of experience, painstakingly honed skill and the final recognition of Faith, this revelation is one of burning purity.

Notwithstanding the current political turmoil back home, an eight-member Egyptian Mawlawyiah troupe enthralled the audience by an audio-visual of music and circular dervish dance whirling around singers in a circle.

A Bangladeshi team, led by Anusheh Anadil, sang the household songs of the famous 18th century poet-philosopher Fakir Lalon Shah, on whom based the recent Golden Peacock winning Bengali film 'Moner Manush'.

The 'bauls' and 'fakirs' of West Bengal's Nadia and Murshidabad districts were huge hits by their spontaneous, simple and meaningful lyrics.

Another Bengal team led by Armaan Fakir presented the little-known 'Bangla Qawwali'. Traditionally performed at the Dargahs, the devotional songs had 'Dhol' and 'Khol' as percussions replacing Tabla.

The first Sufi ensemble also included the 'Warsi Brothers' from Hyderabad, Delhi's 'Druv Sangari' and team, 'Mirs' from Bikaner and 'Haji Md Ahmed Khan Warsi's team from Uttar Pradesh.

"It is a peace concert in times of violence. We want to bring a convergence of ideas about truth, harmony, self-belief and peace through music. It is a celebration of the quest for the divine through love," organiser Amitava Bhattacharya said.

Besides musical performances, the festival included workshops and exhibitions to showcase the traditional culture, beliefs and music of the Sufi mystics.

"We had more than 10,000 people at the open-air concert, while more than 700 people, including young students, learnt about Sufism at the pre-concert workshops," Bhattacharya said.

The event would also help the poor musicians, most of whom were from the rural areas, to earn a livelihood, he said.

The festival was organised by Banglanatak.com in collaboration with the state's tourism department.

By Premankur Biswas, *‘It’s as if the world was abandoning us’* - Indian Express - India; Saturday, February 5, 2011

Waves of protesters shouting anti-Hosni Mubarak slogans — and firebombs — have taken over the Al Haram street outside his home in Cairo. But Amel El Tony, who has not spoken to his wife for a day, is not worried. “My family will stay indoors. They know better than to step out,” he says.

Away from the turmoil in his country, the Sufi dervish who is currently in India to participate in Sufi Sutra, a Sufi music festival here, adds, “I have faith in the Almighty. I can’t afford to get agitated. We are messengers of peace. We have to perform in his name.”

When Tony and his six troupe members took a flight from Cairo International Airport on February 2 — six days after the protests erupted — they witnessed a sight they wish to forget soon. “The airport was crowded with people from foreign consulates and tourists who were boarding special flights away from the country. It’s as if the world was abandoning us,” he says.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Bonnyrigg artist Khaled Sabsabi has put Sufism under the spotlight for his contribution to Sydney Festival’s Edge of Elsewhere art project.

Sabsabi spent three months filming the meditation and chanting ceremonies of a southwest Sydney Sufi community for the project, which is at Campbelltown Arts Centre until March 13.

“It’s an insight that’s hardly ever seen in Australian society,” Sabsabi said. “For me, particularly coming from a Muslim background, it’s not about one specific religion; it’s about all of us seeking wisdom or knowledge.

“In its simplest form it’s about humanity and inner peace.”

Having migrated to Australia with his family in 1978, the Lebanese-born artist knows a thing or two about the experience of migrant communities, particularly in the southwest.

Growing up in Granville, Sabsabi found a creative outlet in hip-hop music, which allowed him to express his own sense of cultural and social displacement.

He has since worked in youth prisons and refugee camps as a community worker, which has inspired much of his extensive portfolio of multimedia artworks.

Sabsabi hopes his three simple, largely unedited video projections of Sufi ceremonies will help to demystify Sufism and deflect cultural misunderstandings of all cultural communities.

“I think the idea of demystifying something is to create access and to break down pre-conceived ideas,” he said. “There is a problem in the community when people don’t understand what the community is about.”

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Two people were killed and over two dozen injured in a bomb blast on Thursday night outside the Baba Haider Saeen shrine in Lahore. The explosion took place on the eve of the second day of the Urs of Baba Saeen. The number of casualties remained relatively low in comparison with other such attacks because of the low-intensity explosives used. However, the terrorists got their desired result: putting fear in the hearts of people who visit Sufi shrines.

Last year was the deadliest as far as attacks on Sufi shrines is concerned. The terrorists attacked the most famous shrines in Pakistan: Data Darbar in Lahore, Baba Farid Ganj Shakar’s shrine in Pakpattan, and Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s shrine in Karachi. The attacks on Data Darbar and Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s shrines took place on Thursdays just like the recent attack on Baba Haider Saeen’s shrine. Most people visit shrines on Thursday as it is considered a sacred day and langar (food) is distributed in shrines all over the country that day. The hardliner Islamists consider visiting shrines a form of shirk (associating partners with God), thus it is not a complete surprise that they are targeting these places. For them, no place is sacred, be it a mosque, imambargah, shrine, etc. Granted that it is difficult to secure the whole country but the government needs to provide security to the obvious targets. Security measures taken in the month of Muharram this year were impressive, but we now need sustained security for all places that could be possible targets.

In recent months we have witnessed a shrinking of public space. Most arts and culture events now take place inside private spaces. After the World Performing Arts Festival was attacked by low-intensity blasts in 2008, most people are reluctant to attract the wrath of the terrorists.

This is indeed a sad reflection on the kind of society we have now become. Tolerance for arts and culture depreciated over the years because of the moral brigade and now even visiting Sufi shrines has become a hazard. It is time to take back our public space from the terrorists. The government needs to launch ferocious crackdowns against all terrorist outfits. The citizens, too, need to make their voice heard by raising awareness and helping Pakistan become a tolerant society once again.

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

BY TNI Correspondent, *The way of the mystic* - The News International - Karachi, Pakistan; Thursday, February 3, 2011

Karachi: The Goethe-Institut was the venue of a movie highlighting the tradition of the Dervishes and Sufis in the Sub-Continent Wednesday evening.

Titled “The Red Sufi”, the movie, produced by Martin Weinhart, traces the train journey of Dr Wasim Frembgen, an anthropologist at the University of Munich in Germany from Lahore to Sehwan Sharif, the site of Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine.

A departure from the conventional form of religiosity, the movie depicts the mystics approach to The Almighty and their endeavour to feel at one with God. The movie begins in Lahore amid the observance of rites and rituals of the saint’s followers in the most uninhibited of manner. There are the whirling Dervishes with long, flowing robes, unkempt hair, and whirling and gyrating to the beat of drums played with all the gusto the drummers could muster. Unconventional as it may sound, there are women going into the whirling trances and ecstacy too alongside men. All this while the dancers have their eyes fixed and arms outstretched heavenward as if in supplication to The Almighty. The movie shows the producer attending a concert at one of the shrines in Lahore where the lyrics sung to classical music tunes music centre around the glory of God.

The movie highlights the quaint bazaars of Lahore just as one had been transported back into time into the Eleventh or twelfth centuries. It also shows sections of the Shia community participating in the rituals.

Then the train departs on its journey to its destination, Sehwan Sharif in Sindh, to the tomb of the most venerated mystic saint, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar where the religious slogans reverberate through the air every now and then. Here too all the rites and rituals pivot around dancing Derveshes and full-throated hymns in praise of The Almighty.

However, there also are scenes in the movie which some could find squeamish. For instance there’s a scene featuring eunuchs dancing away. Dr Frembgen talks to them and asks them as to what brought them there.

In their somewhat raven-throated masculine voices, contrasting with their totally feminine attire, these denizens of the genetic third world reply that they come there because no matter how difficult, how impossible, when they come over to the shrine and pray for a favour, it is invariably granted.

This is supposed to speak for the spirituality of the movement and also bring home the fact that the intermediate gender are as human as anyone of us and it is cruelty to treat them as lower forms of creation.

What is revealing about the movie is that so many highly educated people are devotees of the saint. Two of those featured were highly qualified surgeons.

Introducing the movie, Dr Frembgen said that he was fascinated by the living expressions of the Sufi tradition in Pakistan.

“We should pay due attention to the religiosity of the local traditions”, he said.

Dr Frembgen said that attendance at the shrines in the recent past had declined because of the security situation, the bombings and the growing militancy.

The screening of the movie was followed by an enlivening question-answer session which reflected all shade of opinion, from opposition to the content of the movie, to endorsement, and philosophical analysis.

In a dispute that could have repercussions at other large Islamic universities and seminaries in the Muslim world, a clash between liberal ideas and religious orthodoxy has engulfed India's Darul Uloom Deoband University - South Asia's largest Muslim seminary, which sought to appoint a 'modern' vice-chancellor.

Maulana Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi (pictured), the new mohatmim (vice-chancellor) of Darul Uloom Deoband, regarded as the world's largest and most powerful school for the dissemination and propagation of Islam, was appointed on 10 January.

He was forced to resign within weeks, then retracted his resignation, in a tangled web of allegations and accusations as a dispute between hardline and liberal groups erupted over his appointment.

Only Al Azhar University in Cairo has comparable importance in the Islamic world, with some commentators saying the crisis at Darul Uloom Deoband could lead to Al Azhar emerging as the leading centre for Islamic learning.

Deoband's 300-year-old core curriculum teaches Islamic law, Islamic jurisprudence and traditional Islamic spirituality (known as Tasawwuf, which is the focus of Sufism). However at a time when seminaries in India are portrayed as being out of touch with the modern world, there is a need for reform while assuring preservation of Islamic ethics.

It was felt Vastanvi would modernise education in Deoband. The new vice-chancellor, who holds an MBA, announced plans to acquire 250 hectares of land for medical, pharmaceutical and engineering colleges as one of his first acts in office.

Vastanvi himself had set up a model madrassa (educational institution), Jamia Islamia Ishaatul Uloom, in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, providing modern and technical education alongside religious education.

However Vastanvi has become embroiled in a dispute over comments he allegedly made on the highly emotive 2002 Gujarat violence, in which more than 1,000 Muslims were killed by a Hindu mob. The massacre triggered major controversy among Muslim scholars and students, particularly on the role of the state and police in fanning the violence.

In an interview in The Times of India after assuming office, Vastanvi reportedly called on the Muslim community to move on and look beyond the Gujarat violence.

He was also quoted as saying the Muslim community had become better off during Narendra Modi's rule as Chief Minister of Gujarat state, a comment that caused outrage among Muslims who have not forgiven Modi for his support of Hindu hardliners, seen as the principal instigators of the 2002 violence.

Vastanvi offered to resign over his comments. Later he backtracked, saying he had been misquoted and insisting he had not quit.

The incident has split the Muslim community. Haseeb Ahmed Siddiqui, administrator at Darul Uloom Deoband, feels Vastanvi failed to follow the Islamic principles of the university and should quit.

But a section of liberal Muslim clerics said the controversy was "unfortunate". They want Vastanvi to continue. Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan said Vastanvi "is a liberal Muslim face, who could bring change in the madrassa curriculum".

As a religious school, Deoband has tried to remain apolitical, unlike its followers in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has denounced the Taliban's extremist political ideology, even though many Taliban were educated according to Deobandi principles.

However, in recent years Darul Uloom has been in the news for issuing controversial fatwas or decrees, like asking Muslim women to refrain from working with men and prohibiting all Muslims to work in banks.

Writer and journalist Rasheed Kidwai believes Vastanvi is not a true reformist. "Darul Uloom Deoband is India's oldest and most conservative seminary. The media labelling of 'reformist' Vastanvi as its vice-chancellor is misleading," he said.

"Vastanvi has been a member of Deoband's governing council - majil-e-shoora - since 1998. So, theoretically speaking, he is party to all measures including the fatwa against terrorism and the disapproval of watching TV even if it means the live telecast of the Haj and wearing of jeans by women."

Kidwai added: "The key point is that as an orthodox religious institution, Deoband has been opposed to the idea of ishtehad [reforms]."

"It is not clear if Vastanvi supports the case for ishtehad, or the clergy's ability to permit any concessions into the way of life as it was practiced 1,400 years ago."

Some say the present crisis has more to do with the politics of the Jamiat-e-Ulema, a body of nationalist Deobandi clerics who have a strong influence over Darul Uloom Deoband, where one faction is intent on ousting an 'outsider' like Vastanvi.

Some Muslim scholars believe Arshad Madani, of the Madani family that has controlled the affairs of Deoband for many decades, is behind the opposition to Vastanvi. It was reported that Madani wanted the job after the death of former vice-chancellor Maulana Margboor Rahman.

Madani and Vastanvi are also at loggerheads over the proposal of the Indian government to improve and modernise madrassa education in India. While Madani is apprehensive of any changes might damage the religious identity of madrassas, Vastanvi has a more accommodating approach.

Vastanvi's fate will be decided by Deoband's executive body later this month. But if the dispute takes deeper roots it could have wider repercussions.

Kidwai said students may be "forced to take a stand and in many cases divide themselves as 'hardliners' and 'moderates' at an impressionable stage of their lives. Subsequently political parties step in, making things go from bad to worse."

İstanbul is a city whose streets are filled with friends of God. Whichever suburb a person visits, they will encounter a dervish lodge or the türbe of a Sufi saint.

At times, they are befuddled as to whose station they will call on, or upon whose soul will they send their supplications. But if the intention is set to tour a türbe, then, naturally, roads will lead to those best known. To Eyüp Sultan, for example. Or to Aziz Mahmut Hüdai’ye, or to Sümbül Efendi. The fact that the türbe of Sümbül Efendi -- an esteemed Ottoman scholar honoring Kocamustafapaşa’s Ali Fakih district with his presence for almost 500 years -- has always been a center of attraction notwithstanding, it has begun to host an even greater number of visitors in recent years.

Whether it be through the efforts of the Fatih Municipal Council to renew the dergah, the Mevlevi dervish lodge, and its surroundings -- the one-time center of Sufism -- or through the videos of the young imam of the Sümbül Efendi Mosque, Hafız İbrahim Yıldız’s recital of the Quran being broadcast over the Internet, this place has come to life. In particular, the serving of soup to the mosque’s congregation following morning prayer on Sundays, as was the case during Sümbül Efendi’s time, has heightened interest in the mosque and türbe. The people wanting to prostrate in ritual prayer at Sümbül Efendi’s türbe and ask him to pray for them are filling the mosque’s courtyard. So what awaits us in a visit to Sümbül Efendi?

The spiritual master of the Sümbüliye branch of the Halveti Sufi spiritual order, Sümbül Efendi, whose real name was Yusuf Bin Ali, was born in 1452 in Merzifon. He was educated from a very young age in İsparta and travelled to İstanbul to learn from the famous scholar of the Fatih Sultan Mehmet and Sultan Bayezid II era Efdalzâde Hamîdüddîn Efendi. Through the initiative of Grand Vizier Koca Mustafa Paşa, he later established his dergah in what is now the Ali Fakir district adjacent to a church converted into a mosque. He contributed to the education and training of many scholars and Sufi saints. One of them was his son-in-law Merkez Efendi, whose türbe is situated in Zeytinburnu. Sümbül Efendi is at the same time the spiritual master of the Sümbüliye branch of the Halveti Sufi spiritual order. There are many treatises describing the Halveti order in his name. He is also one from whom Ottoman sultans frequently requested prayers. According to one narration, he told Sultan Yavuz Selim that he would conquer Egypt. He passed away in the year 1529 and was buried in the courtyard of his dergah. Come along to Sümbül Efendi’s dergah.

Let me explain what you will encounter, if indeed you set out with the wish to visit Sümbül Efendi. Sümbül Efendi’s dergah is positioned right at the center of Kocamustafapaşa, built up around an expansive courtyard. Three separate doors lead from the courtyard to the outside suburb. The entrance of one of the doors is surrounded by a cemetery on both the right and left sides. The grave of one of the esteemed calligraphers of the day, Hafız Osman Efendi, is here. Just beyond the cemetery is Sümbül Efendi’s türbe. It is very clean and well-looked after. Further along lies Şeyh Yakup Efendi, and to the north is Şeyh Hasan Adli Efendi’s grave. One must not forget to read the Fatiha while here. At the foot of Sümbül Efendi’s türbe lie the grandchildren of Caliph Ali, descended from his son Hüseyin. According to one narration, these twin sultans, as they are called, came to İstanbul with the Prophet’s companions for the conquest of İstanbul and passed away here. According to another story, they were captured as prisoners of war by the Byzantines and thus came to İstanbul. The graves of these two sultans, Fatma and Sakine, were lost over time. Sümbül Efendi discovered that they were buried here. Their current türbe was subsequently constructed by Sultan Mahmud II. At the head of their türbe is a centuries-old cypress protected by a wooden structure. It is believed that this cypress was planted after their burial by Jabir, a companion of the Prophet. The dergah has become a place frequented by Alevis due to the presence of these twin sultans. In the middle of the courtyard is the Sümbül Efendi Mosque. The mosque was in fact originally a Byzantine church. The church was converted into a mosque by Koca Mustafa Paşa upon the request of Bayezid II. The mosque has a constantly changing congregation. The last few years in particular, and with the influence of the mosque’s imam, the congregation has been teeming, even during morning prayers. The mosque itself, however, is in need of a restoration.

On both sides of the mosque is a medrese (school). These medreses are currently in use for the purpose of teaching the Quran to both boys and girls and raising hafız (those who memorize the entire Quran). It is an interesting fact that previously in the courtyard facing the türbes were gecekondus (shanty settlements) and some people who did not find these pleasant endeavored to remove them all. In addition to this, they constructed a tea garden and a library, all proceeds of which were to be used for the mosque. Now anyone who visits does not leave without having a glass of tea first. Lastly, in the külliye (social complex) is the Sümbül Sinan Dergah. The dergah was restored by the Fatih Municipal Council this year and was officially opened by Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç. This wooden building is currently used as center that provides classes in classical Islamic arts.

Upon exiting the dergah, one finds streets filled with traces of Sufism and the district’s old Ottoman past.

As a sign of religious fraternity in Syria, Muslim and Christian chanters shared the Opera House stage on Thursday marking the anniversary of the Birthday of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him).

Damascus: In their first joint presentation, the voices of the members of Tahlila Group for Sufi Chanting and the Christian al-Farah Choir filled the Opera House stage in an special evening of religious songs.

The singers were keen to give their songs a heart and soul touching humanitarian aesthetic character with a sophisticated vocabulary filled with sublime spirituality.

"It is an unquestionable and absolute reality that we are in Syria, Muslims and Christians, are equal regardless of the different paths we walk toward God," said Father Elias Zahlawi, the founder of al-Farah Choir.

"To translate our faith in God," he added, "we must love each other and cooperate to build a worthy humane society."

Leader of Tahlila Group, Mr. Hisham Al-Khatib, for his part, said that the anchoring of the spirit of religious fraternity is one of the primary goals of his group, hoping to organize other such ceremonies and celebrate religious occasions with al-Farah choir in the future.

Founded in 2000, Tahlila Group specialized in Sufi music and recitation seeks to promote the genuine Arab Islamic cultural heritage, particularly in Europe, through a methodology based on modern melodic songs.

As for the al-Farah (Joy) Choir, it first saw the light in 1977 at the hand of Father Elias Zahlawi with a group of 55 children, and has now come to include 500 singers.

Muslim pop stars, who give religious messages in their songs, are very popular on video-sharing websites. While some of the stars were brought up as Muslims, others converted to Islam later in life. Their music has been termed 'green pop' by some, yet the musicians prefer to see their music as fitting more authentically into Muslim musical traditions

Bringing a moral message to their music, a new generation of Muslim singers is following the legendary Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, in smashing album sales and video-sharing records with their religiously themed work.

In addition to the singer Islam, stars such as Sami Yusuf, Hamza Robertson, Zain Bhinka and hip-hop group Native Deen have sold millions of albums. Their music is termed “green pop” by some circles, but they call their style “nasheed” (Muslim vocal music).

Yusuf was born in 1980 in London to a musical family of Iranian Azerbaijanis. At the age of 18, he received a scholarship from one of the world’s most prestigious music institutes, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and gained many fans within a short time around the world, particularly in Muslim countries. He sings in English, Turkish, Arabic and Persian on his albums.

He released his first album, “Al-Mu’allim,” in 2003 and second album, “My Ummah,” in 2005. Later, he performed a concert in Istanbul in 2007 that drew 250,000 people. Yusuf, who has appeared on the cover of many popular magazines, including Time Magazine, is working for young people to be proud of their own identity by providing messages of tolerance and peace in his songs.

Yusuf’s latest album, “Wherever You Are,” which was released in 2010, has also broken sales records. Among his most popular songs are “Al-Mu'allim,” “Hasbi Rabbi,” “You Came To Me,” “Healing,” “My Ummah,” “Eid Song” and “Supplication.”

The singer, who appeared on a list of the world’s 500 most influential Muslims in 2009, has also made his name known with social responsibility projects. He took the stage at the “Muslim Live 8” event which was organized at Wembley in London to help Darfur. Tickets for the concert were sold out.

Yusuf Islam, a.k.a. Cat Stevens

At the beginning of his successful musical career, Stephen Demetre Georgiou assumed the name of Cat Stevens. Born in 1948 as the third child of a Greek father and Swedish mother, Stevens attended Catholic school although his father was Greek Orthodox. He left the school at age 16 and released his first hit song “I Love My Dog” at the age of 18, taking the new moniker when he released his album, “Matthew and Son,” in 1966.

Stevens converted to Islam in 1977 after nearly drowning in an accident. During his recovery from the accident, his brother had given him a copy of the Quran, which he credited with helping him to find peace and recover from the incident. As is customary when one converts to Islam, Stevens changed his name, calling himself Yusuf Islam after the prophet Joseph, interpreter of dreams.

In later years, he left the musical world and asked music companies to no longer distribute his albums but he was rejected. After a public absence of many years, he re-appeared on stage to perform some English-language nasheeds, and has ultimately released another five albums under the name of Yusuf Islam in addition to the 14 he released as Stevens. He is now married with five children and lives in London.

His Arabic song “Taleal Bedru Aleyna” and the English-language “A Is For Allah” broke records on the Internet.

Tom Robertson chose Islam at age 21

Tom Robertson, who was born in Oldham, England, in 1982, took music and drama classes until the age 20 before converting to Islam a year later and changing his name to Hamza. Since then, Robertson has invited many people to Islam through his songs.

Robertson, who turned to Sufism because of his Muslim friends, was discovered by the singer Islam at an event where he performed in London. Known for his support for poor women and children, Robertson released his first album “Something About Life” in 2009 and has become very popular in Turkey and abroad.

The song “Your Beauty,” which he composed with Yusuf, is very popular on video-sharing websites.

Another Muslim pop singer, Zain Bhinka, was born in 1974 in South Africa. He gained success in a song competition in 1994, started making music in 1996 and has since composed many songs with the singer Islam. His albums “Mountains of Makkah,” “Allah Knows,” “1415 The Beginning,” “First We Need Love” and “A Way of Life” are very popular in the Islamic world.

Bhinka’s name dropped like a bombshell in the virtual world with the death of Michael Jackson in 2009 as there were claims that the former’s song, “Give thanks to Allah,” was actually performed by Jackson and that Jackson had converted to Islam before his death. When the truth was revealed, Jackson fans said Bhinka had put the video on the Internet to promote himself. Bhinka remained silent for some time but later said he was not a Jackson fan and that their voices were not similar.

Bhinka has performed concerts in 18 U.S. cities with the support of the North American Islamic Union as well as in his own country, European countries and Australia. He gives priority to television programs for children.

World’s first hip-hop-style nasheeds

Hip-hop, which became a life style for African-Americans at the end of the 1970s in the United States, was the starting point of the band Native Deen, which was formed in 2000 in Washington, D.C.

Naim Mohammed, Joush Salam and Abdul Malik Ahmed, who chose to infuse their hip-hop songs with Islamic messages, became very popular among Muslims living in the U.S. within a very short time.

What makes the group different from other hip-hop musicians is the instruments they play; they use percussion instruments only, as some Muslims believe that playing musical instruments is impermissible in the faith.

The group members have also made common projects with the singer Islam, Bhinka and Yusuf. Their song “Not Afraid to Stand Alone” is a very popular video on the Internet

Picture: Yusuf Islam is among the best-known pop singers in the Islamic world. Photo: HDN.

These days people in different parts of the world are celebrating memorial of the birth of the prophet Mohammad (Peace be upon Him) in the 12th of Rabiee al Awal Hijri as normal as every year.

Sudan is accustomed to celebrating the festival and it's known that Sudanese people are famous for their love to the prophet (Peace be upon him).

The festival usually starts at the first day of Rabiee al Awal in form of carnivals called Al Molid al Nabaway al Shareef. The festival begins with hype in which Sudaneses people at different levels participate including Sheikhs of Sufi sects, religious scholars, students' unions, workers' associations and police force.

The hype always marches from particular point till it reaches square celebrations.

The celebrations often begins as small session for reciting Koran in addition to religious prophetic praises in addition to symposiums and seminars about the life of Mohammad (Peace be upon him). Different states of Sudan celebrate in the same way.

The celebration square is always surrounded by stalls selling special types of sweet prepared for the occasion. There are many people who have become famous for making sweet. Al Tayeb Sayed Mekki and al Maghrabi are two of the most famous sweet traders and makers in Omdurman.

The most types of sweet made for the occasion are Juzia, Humosia and Alaf which made of sesame and sugar in addition to Lacom sweet (candy). Sweet for children is made in form of tiny statue decorated with colored cellophane paper. It is called Arrossa (bride). Some times it is made in the form of horse or knight.

Sufi sects installed marquees in the middle of square celebration. The marquees are always decorated with flowers. Chants in praise of the prophet (Peace be upon Him) are sung in these marquees. A great drum called Noba always is hit accompanied by praising songs.

The celebration has special flavor in Omdurman particularly in residential areas of Wad Nobaway, Hai al Omda, Hai al Sayed Mekki, Wad Aro, al Rikabiya and al Shuhada. People living these areas participate in the celebration via serving visitors with juice and sweet.

Children, men, women, young people and old people all participate in serving visitors as they believe that such participation is source of bless. They inherited this tradition from their forefathers and they are keen on preserving it.

Mogadishu: At least seven people were killed in Mogadishu Monday after clashes broke out between pro-government Sufi sect militants and Al-Qaeda linked Islamists, officials and witnesses said.

The clashes erupted around Maka Al-Mukarama road where the Sufi militants supporting the government were stationed after heavily armed Shebab fighters attacked their positions.

Both sides claimed victory in the fighting.

"The fighting today was very heavy and we inflicted loses on the enemy. Two of our soldiers were killed and three others injured. We arrested several of their fighters during the fighting," Yonis Ali, spokesman for the Sufi militants told reporters.

Witnesses said five civilians were also killed by stray mortar and heavy artillery shells exchanged during the clashes and medical sources said the number of wounded civilians reached 17.

"I saw five civilians who died in the crossfire, three of them were killed after a heavy artillery shell struck a house in Bakara market, eight others were also injured in the same neighbourhood," witness Hussein Wardhigley said.

The clashes came after remarks by Defence Minister Abdihakin Haji Mohamud Fiqi vowing to eliminate Shebab militants from the country.

"We have given opportunities of negotiations to the Shebab elements; unfortunately they have failed to benefit from their chances and... we will eliminate them from the country. From now on, we will put all of our forces together to fight them," Fiqi told reporters in Mogadishu.

The circle of men falls silent. A string of prayer beads swings from the creased hand of a gray-bearded sheikh, all else is still. For an instant the circle seems to hold its breath.

“Ya lateef, ya lateef,” chants the sheikh. The voice of a young boy bursts in with it, “Ya lateef, ya lateef.” Devotion is flying from 30 or so sets of lungs, filling every corner of the Mosque of Muhieddine Ibn ‘Arabi in Salihiyyeh, in the foothills of Mount Qasyoun.

This is the Sufi dhikr (remembrance) and the men in the circle are sending out a chant of devotion at the Muhieddine Ibn ‘Arabi mosque.

“They are connecting with God from the very center of their hearts,” says Ahmad Al Mujahid, one of the circle's leaders.

As the chant gathers momentum, the energy swirling around the circle is almost palpable. Some are rocking back and forth, their palms upturned towards the sky, with tightly shut eyes and intense expressions on their faces. The chant rolls on, faster and faster, louder and louder. Then, whoosh, and silence descends.

This singing, like the other chants, draws words from the Quran and hadith. Ahmad says that the participants sing themselves into a state of fitra, where they feel their primordial nature - the original way that God made them.

Less than five meters from the dhikr circle lies a tomb of great power. According to Sheikh Muhammad, it is the Damascus equivalent of the Kaa’ba. Pilgrims journey to say a prayer, ask for a cure for sickness, help with hardship or just bask in its presence.

It is the Muhieddine Ibn ‘Arabi tomb, more commonly known as Ibn ‘Arabi to English speakers, or Al Sheikh Al Akbar (The Greatest Master) to Sufis. He is a saint, philosopher, mystic, poet, traveler and sage of universal importance to Sufism.

Born in the 12th Century, with a body of work stretching to 15,000 pages, he has inspired philosophers from China to Europe - from Daoists to Dante.

Sheikh Muhammad Al Yaqoubi is a Syrian scholar and Sufi descended from the prophet Muhammad. Formerly the Mufti of Sweden, he now lives in Damascus and gives a weekly Friday speech at the mosque.

“Attachment to God is a work of the heart,” he says. “The heart is detached from everything except God in the dhikr.”

He says that Ibn ‘Arabi is present in the tomb, listening to the pilgrims who visit the mosque.

“They cannot hear his replies because of the veil that separates humans from the world of spirits and djinn. Only great Gnostics can perceive him.”

Some Fridays, though, believers report seeing Ibn ‘Arabi. Participants in the ceremony have been known to see a beam of light projecting from his tomb to the dhikr. One Friday, Sheikh Muhammad forgot to include the Fatiha (the opening verse of the Quran) in his evening speech, as he usually does. “Ibn ‘Arabi appeared to me in the audience and reminded me! I had to stop and say the Fatiha!”

Andalusian Spain of the late 12th Century was a mix of religions, managing relative harmony among the followers of various faiths. From an early age, Ibn ‘Arabi saw the underlying unity of the three monotheistic faiths. According to Sheikh Muhammad, Ibn ‘Arabi saw in them not difference, but a single shared essence. The same is true of Damascus, he says.

“In Damascus, people of different religions have always known how to live together. From an early age we learn to distinguish our religions and ourselves, but not to hate other religions. We respect each other’s right to live together, and to share land, air and food. In this respect, Syria presents a model for the west on dealing with minorities.”

More than 770 years after Ibn ‘Arabi was laid in his tomb, a line from his poetry gives expression to a sentiment that resonates to this day in the dhikr. It resonates with people, regardless of faith:

“By God, I feel so much love that it seems the skies would be rent asunder, the stars fall and the mountains move away if I burdened them with it: such is my experience of love.”

Participation in the dhikr is recommended to all Muslims regardless of denomination (Sheikh Muhammad calls it the tissue of Islam). Anyone is welcome at the tomb of Ibn ‘Arabi, and men of all faiths can observe the dhikr every Friday after the Maghrib prayer (a little after 4:30 pm).

Sheikh Muhammad al Yaqoubi gives a speech every Friday at the mosque after Asha’ prayer (just after 6 pm). He will begin classes on Sufi mysticism in English in coming months.

Tripoli: The second Sufi conference has kicked off in the Libyan capital Tripoli with a call to all Sufists to spread the word of Sufism all over the world since it is the most acknowledged path for the betterment of the humanity and the spread of Islam.

Speaking at the opening ceremony at the World Islamic Call Society Headquarters, the Secretary General of WICS - Doctor Muhammad Ahmad Sharif appealed to the participants to preach to people and children in particular the importance of Sufism and how it can lead to the betterment of the whole humanity.

He also appealed to all Muslims in the whole world to be tolerant, peaceful and also to follow peaceful ways to solve their own problems.

The conference which has attracted about one thousand SUFI followers from all corners of the world is under the theme "Recommend One Another to the Truth " and has been organized by The World Islamic Call Society in conjunction with the International Forum for Sufism.

In this conference, great Islamic researchers and Academicians are to discuss three major topics and these are: "The role of Sufism in Islamic Propagation", "the Sufi Social role" and "Its approach to other Faiths".

Israel-Libya: Libyan leader Mouammar Kadhafi has said there should be no recognition for Israel until the Palestinian issue is resolved.

Speaking on Sunday evening, during the commemoration of the birth of Prophet Mohamed, he said: 'We should not recognize the Zionist entity until the issue of the Palestinian people is resolved, that all Palestinian refugees return home and a single democratic state is created.'

The Libyan leader noted that the Arab world is currently experiencing a popular revolutionary movement, which must lead the Palestinians to march peacefully from the refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Libya and Jordan and others to Palestine.

He urged the Palestinians to camp on the borders of Palestine, even if the Israelis prevent them from entering.

He also called on Palestinians in the Diaspora to move by boats in the direction of their country and, in case they are prevented from entering, they should settle on the shores and thus create a situation of global crisis that the international community will be forced to address.

Heads of Muslim brotherhoods Sufi and Murid scholars and their devotees representing 90 ways of Sufism in 76 countries from different continents of the world, several kings, sultans, princes and traditional leaders in Africa attended the ceremony.

Islamabad: Famous poet Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum’s death anniversary observed on Monday. His lyrics still live as these are beyond death.

Tabassum was born in Amritsar on August 4, 1899. He then joined Islamia College for his Master’s degree in Persian. In 1927, he joined the Central Training College, Lahore, as a Lecturer, where he worked then till 1931, private news channel reported.

In 1931, he joined Government College, Lahore, from where he retired as Head of the Persian Department in 1954. During this period he matured into a great poet, critic and teacher. He taught three generations of students, including Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Noon Meem Rashid and Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi.

Ali Mohammad Saberi said: "In this session, Saadi\'s stance, his main ideas and the mystery of his grandeur from mysticism and Islamic perspective will be surveyed."The lecturers of this session are Seyyed Hassan Shahrestani, professor at Honar University, and Mahdi Kiayi, Mowlana researcher.

Saberi asserted that these sessions by no means deal with Saadi from literary point of view. He added: "Many critics have studied Saadi from literary perspectives yet in this session we are not going to talk about his poetic diction or lyrical poetry."

He continued: "Also we are not going to have a psychological approach to Saadi, although he is the peak of Persian Qazal. Our purpose, however, is to deal with his mysticism and the horizon of Saadi\'s ideologies in Islamic Sufism."

He emphasized: "Yet we should bear in mind that Saadi has learnt literature from Sheikh Sohrevardi who has been a renowned mystic of the time. Therefore his literature is originated from mysticism."

He also referred to the analysis of Golistan and Boustan of Saadi during these sessions and added: "Saadi\'s Golistan is a book of ethics and mysticism. This session will, to some extent, deal with moral aspects of his poetry and some particular tales."

The session \'Mystery of Saadi\'s grandeur in Islamic mysticism\' will be held at the House of Literati on Wednesday 9 February from 16:30 to 18:30 with the presence of experts and enthusiasts.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

By TOI Staff Reporter, *Sufi Rang Festival to start from Feb 9* - The Times Of India - India; Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Ajmer: The third international Sufi Rang Festival is set to begin from February 9, and will continue till February 16. The festival is organised by the Chishty Foundation at the Ajmer dargah.

In a media briefing Salman Chishty of the Chishty foundation said, "Nearly 400 paintings depicting the teachings of Sufism will be organized at the mehfil khana of the dargah. Devotees and artists from Europe and Asia will be participating in the programme," said Salman.

A group from Singapore and artistes from Tamil Nadu will perform kalams in the dargah. The various performances at the festival will illustrate the teachings of Sufi saints.

The Egyptian revolution brought down a brutal tyrant using only non-violent means. In doing so, they have not only begun the process of changing Egypt, but perhaps of changing the world. They have given hope to many, and they have reminded many of previous non-violent struggles.

This was not an al Qaeda perversion of jihad, but a true Islamic, spiritual jihad - a struggle for freedom and justice. Because it was a non-violent movement, the Egyptian people have won the hearts of people around the world, and have inspired people around the world to struggle to achieve and/or retain freedom and democracy.

Abdal Hakim Murad wrote in 2002 *Islamic Spirituality: The Forgotten Revolution* ... The Islamic movement has so far been remarkably unsuccessful. We must ask ourselves how it is that a man like Nasser, a butcher, a failed soldier and a cynical demagogue, could have taken over a country as pivotal as Egypt, despite the vacuity of his beliefs, while the Muslim Brotherhood, with its pullulating millions of members, should have failed, and failed continuously, for six decades. The radical accusation of a failure in methodology cannot fail to strike home in such a context of dismal and prolonged inadequacy. ... At this critical moment in our history, the umma has only one realistic hope for survival, and that is to restore the ‘middle way’, defined by that sophisticated classical consensus which was worked out over painful centuries of debate and scholarship. That consensus alone has the demonstrable ability to provide a basis for unity. But it can only be retrieved when we improve the state of our hearts, and fill hem with the Islamic virtues of affection, respect, tolerance and reconciliation. This inner reform, which is the traditional competence of Sufism, is a precondition for the restoration of unity in the Islamic movement. The alternative is likely to be continued, and agonising, failure.?

When I saw people praying calmly while water hoses were being aimed at them by the military, I knew in my heart that these people were engaged in a spiritual enterprise.

Shahed Amanullah in an article about one of my heroes, Badshah Khan of Afghanistan *asked a question* Could Badshah Khan’s tactics work in modern-day conflicts in the Muslim world - Palestine, Kashmir, or Chechnya? Perhaps nonviolence isn’t relevant in an age of smart bombs and cruise missiles, but the answer won’t be certain unless someone tries it.

What we have seen in Egypt answers this question in the affirmative. Yes, non-violent tactics can work, and in fact may be the only tactics that will work. The Egyptians have tried it and it works.

Badshah Khan asked of his followers in their struggle to remove British colonial occupation from India and Afghanistan that they take the following oath: I am a Servant of God, and as God needs no service, but serving his creation is serving him, I promise to serve humanity in the name of God. I promise to refrain from violence and from taking revenge. I promise to forgive those who oppress me or treat me with cruelty. I promise to refrain from taking part in feuds and quarrels and from creating enmity. I will live in accordance with the principles of nonviolence. I will serve all God’s creatures alike; and my object shall be the attainment of the freedom of my country and my religion. I will never desire any reward whatever for my service. All my efforts shall be to please God, and not for any show or gain. *Badshah Khan: The forgotten Muslim hero, Chan’ad Bahraini*

The young people in Egypt may not have ever heard of Badshah Khan, but they followed his principles.

When the pictures were televised of the water canons being aimed at protestors I thought of the same sort of images I had seen during the civil rights struggle in America. All through the last month since the revolution started in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, many scenes brought back strong mental images of memories from the anti-war and civil rights movements in my own country, and of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. This revolution made me think often of Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Abdul Gaffar Khan, and other heroic figures who brought about change through non-violent means.

And, I am not alone in this, a veteran of the Selma March saw the parallels: As I watched the television footage of demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square make the decision to reduce the violence going on around them by sitting down in the street when word came that thugs from the Mubarak regime were on the way to break up their rally, I was reminded of how it felt in the spring of 1965 to be part of the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march. What we are witnessing in Egypt should not seem strange to Americans. For it is nothing less than Egypt’s version of the kind of protest that permanently changed our way of life more than 45 years ago. *How nonviolent protest defeats injustice, Nicolaus Mills*

People in India saw in this a reflection of Ghandi’s movement This is Egyptians moment to transform their country. As they continue to struggle for a more just and peaceful Egypt, we look from a far with the conviction that there is no greater joy than seeing people take to the streets and in the spirit of non violence exercising their freedom of speech to call for the end of the Mubarak regime. Thank you Egyptians for touching our hearts and making the world believe in the power of the human spirit. Thank you for the message of non violence, civil disobedience, determination, inspiration, peace, justice, faith, love and dignity. It is through this message that a new Egypt will rise. There will be pro-Mubarak supporters trying to take advantage of this situation and trying to sabotage the dream and aspirations of ordinary Egyptians, but that is too late. The violence that they have used against the peaceful demonstrators will not stop the millions of people that are in the streets. This revolution is going forward and will continue to advance until Mubarak steps down. There is no other alternative. The world is watching and stands on the side of the millions of peaceful demonstrators. *Egyptian revolution has been televised*

In thinking about the momentous events of the past month, I am also struck by a number of amazing achievements and unique aspects of this revolution:

First, that this revolution could never have succeeded if the people had chosen violence as their tactic. This would have made it easy for Mubarak to crush the revolution violently and justify that action to the rest of the world - “you see, they made me do it”. The ordinary people could not have won a military victory, but they were able to win a moral victory. What is very different today than in such struggles of the past is that the revolution was televised and tweeted and texted and posted on Facebook. Those of us who were following events were getting instant reports, photographs, and commentary from people who were right in the center of what was going on.

Second, the Egyptian people through their courageous and noble behavior changed the image not only of Egyptians but also of Arabs and of Muslims. They won hearts and minds and broke stereotypes. Even journalists like Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, and Anderson Cooper came away from Tahrir Square in awe of what the Egyptian people were attempting to accomplish.

Third, the Egyptian people have struck a blow against the deviant view of the meaning of jihad taught by groups like Al Qaeda who believe that violence is the only way to achieve anything. The Egyptian people have proved that change is possible through non-violent means. This is going to make it very difficult for groups like al Qaeda to justify their violence as a legitimate means to an end.

Fourth, the Egyptian people have forced many other autocratic rulers to consider that their own authority may be on shaky ground, and we are seeing many taking pre-emptive steps to improve the lot of their people before they too face revolutions.

Fifth, the Egyptian people have reminded many in America and other countries of the west that whatever influence they might have in a world of equals will be based on living up to their ideals. They have also reminded Americans that we are currently in a situation where we have lost many of the freedoms that previous generations won through struggle, and we need to regain and protect these freedoms.

Bob Herbert sees this as a call for Americans to *return to their democratic ideals*: The Egyptians want to establish a viable democracy, and that’s a long, hard road. Americans are in the mind-bogglingly self-destructive process of letting a real democracy slip away. I had lunch with the historian Howard Zinn just a few weeks before he died in January 2010. He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S. but not at all daunted. “If there is going to be change,” he said, “real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves.” I thought of that as I watched the coverage of the ecstatic celebrations in the streets of Cairo.

Sixth, the Egyptian people have achieved much already, and done this without a coherent leadership. This may be the first time that such a non-violent revolution has been carried out without a strong and respected leader. However, going forward they will need to establish a leadership team that they feel comfortable having speak on their behalf, or too many voices will possibly give an opening to the military or other forces to say they have no one to negotiate with. Even a populist movement needs leadership.

WHAT NEXT?

What has been accomplished to date is monumental, but much remains to do. Two days ago Mubarak was forced to resign. Today, the military agreed to disband the parliament and to suspend the constitution which achieves two more goals of the protestors.

However, the military also said that they plan to rule by martial law for the next six months. They have retained Mubarak’s cabinet to oversee the transition. They have not agreed to disband the emergency powers, or to release political prisoners (including as many as 1,000 protestors arrested since the protests began). Unless the emergency powers are removed, the protestors stand the risk of being picked off one by one and arrested or disappeared. They have not agreed to allow the establishment of a civilian interim government. They show no sign of including representatives of the protestors or anyone else to participate in decision making. It was *reported today* that “An army source said the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will ban meetings by labor unions or professional syndicates, effectively forbidding strikes, and tell people to get back to work.” It seems as if the military elite who are all part of the old Mubarak regime are making only cosmetic changes, and will themselves decide who will be in power and who will be allowed to rewrite the constitution. The Mubarak regime is still in power, only the figurehead is gone. If that is the case, then it is much too early to rejoice.

In a previous article I used a metaphor from Egyptian mythology to refer to Hosni Mubarak and his regime as *scorpions*. I can’t help viewing the Egyptian military in terms of that same mythology. In Egyptian mythology, Sobek was a huge, fierce beast sometimes depicted as a man with a crocodile’s head. He was associated with negative aspects of human nature like deceit, duplicity, passion, and betrayal. A very dangerous creature indeed.

The actions of the Egyptian military remind me of an enormous crocodile lurking in the waters of the Nile. During the time of the people’s revolution in Egypt, the military have remained submerged and silent. The ripples of their presence and underwater movements are visible on the surface of the water. It is a very real presence, but it has not yet given clear indications of whether or not it will come out of the water to sun on the banks of the river or to strike viciously at the people on the bank of the river.

In order to achieve their goal of true freedom and democracy, the people of Egypt will need to be vigilant and focused, and all the freedom loving people will have to remain ready to help them in whatever way we can.

[Click the title of this article to the original article which has many *links* and references (ed.)]

The New Cambridge History of Islam is a work of breathtaking scholarship that does justice to one of the world's great religions, says Noel Malcolm

For the British media, a major scholarly event is like the proverbial small earthquake in Chile: “not many dead”, which means that it is hardly newsworthy at all. The publication of The New Cambridge History of Islam is, despite the potentially inflammatory subject matter, unlikely to lead to any deaths, or even death threats; this is a work of scholarship, not polemics. Yet for those interested in the Islamic world, the appearance of this multi-volume work really is a landmark event, deserving all the public attention and acclamation it can get.

The original Cambridge History of Islam came out in 1970, in two fat volumes. One of them covered the “Central Islamic Lands” (mainly the Middle East) from the origins of Islam to the present; the other dealt with the West, Africa, and the other parts of Asia. The contributors were leading experts, but their chapters were mostly rather simplified narratives, aimed at the general reader and almost footnote-free. And the version of history that was being simplified was in some cases a standard view already long established in the textbooks.

What a lot can change in four decades! For a start, the NCHI is three times the size of the old one, with six volumes of roughly 800 pages each. Footnotes abound, and so do lengthy reading lists; the contributions are plugged into ongoing academic debates, in a way that the chapters in the old Cambridge History did not seem to be. But while it’s true that an ordinary individual reader will find the price tag of the NCHI prohibitive, this is not a work for academic libraries alone. Every good public library should have it.

The huge difference in length between this work and its predecessor is only partly explained, though, by the fact that it is intended for academics as well as general readers. The main reason is that the last two generations have witnessed an extraordinary expansion of knowledge in the field of Islamic studies. Areas such as Central Asian history, or topics such as the spread of Islam in West Africa, or the peculiarities of Indonesian Islam, have been the targets of barrages of monographs; the NCHI is a first attempt to map out a whole new landscape of knowledge.

If those topics sound somehow peripheral, there has also been original work on some of the central features of Islamic faith and practice. Look up “Sufis” in the indexes of the old Cambridge History, and you will find a few scattered references here and there. That reflected the standard view, in which Islam was “official Islam”, a religion celebrated in mosques, and run by imams and muftis; Sufism was some sort of exotic appendage, a minor optional extra for the mystically inclined.

In the NCHI, on the other hand, one finds a lengthy chapter on the early development of Sufism, another one on Sufism and “Neo-Sufism” in the modern age, and multiple references to the Sufi orders or brotherhoods throughout the work. These orders, with their revered leaders, their traditions of personal instruction and their own special forms of worship, have been a major part of the fabric of religious life in most Muslim societies, accepted and valued by almost everyone (except the intolerant Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia). Yet only recently have outside scholars begun to appreciate the role they have played.

But while modern scholarly work has added hugely to our knowledge of Islam, it has performed what might be called subtractions as well as additions. Until the 1970s, almost every account of the origins of Islam accepted the basic story told by the Muslims themselves – a story derived from the Koran, the hadiths (canonical traditions about Mohammed and his teachings) and the writings of medieval Islamic chroniclers and biographers. In the late 1970s, however, a number of Western experts (including Michael Cook, who is the general editor of the NCHI) challenged the consensus, arguing that there was virtually no reliable textual evidence from the earliest period: the text of the Koran had crystallised quite slowly, the hadiths were expressions of later views, and the chroniclers had themselves lacked authentic materials for their histories.

This is a battlefield from which the smoke has not yet cleared. The account of early Islam in the first volume of the NCHI is a cautious, proviso-laden version of the traditional story; near the end of that volume, a special chapter (no less cautious) is devoted to the modern debates; and elsewhere in the work, individual writers take a variety of positions. Some good points are made in favour of trusting elements of the traditional version; but, as Professor Chase Robinson observes, “the authenticity of nearly all documents from the early period is impossible to verify”.

No doubt this Cambridge History too will be replaced, one day, by a bigger and better one. The fascinating chapters it offers on thematic and cultural subjects (such as women and sexuality, “the city and the nomad”, or religious conversion) make one long for more of the same: why no chapter on slavery in Islam, for example, or on the history of the hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca)? And perhaps a new edition might find a little more to say about the indigenous Muslims of Europe; Bosnia gets just a couple of pages here, roughly the same amount as the history of Muslim immigrants in Canada.

But these are small cavils. I have spent nearly a month reading these volumes, and have learned a huge amount – not least, from the final volume, about the background to the various forms of present-day “political Islam”. And I finish reading them impressed by two things: the way in which Islam itself has held together as a religion, stretched across multiple states and cultures with no Pope or hierarchical Church to maintain it; and the way in which this team of scholars has condensed so much learning, with such clarity, into a mere 4,929 pages.

The New Cambridge History of IslamEd by Michael Cook et alCAMBRIDGE, £650, six vols, 4,929ppAvailable from Telegraph Books + 44(0)844 871 1516

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

By Atul Sethi, *One moment in history – February 5, 1927* - The Times of India - India; Sunday, February 6, 2011

In a corner of Delhi's Nizamuddin basti, not far from the dargah of 14th century Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya, stands a whitewashed building. It is a dargah too, but Dilliwallahs and Indians in general may not know it.

Inside its immaculately maintained and quiet interiors, visitors are insulated from the chaos of the locality and the wider world. The dargah is the final resting place of Sufi mystic and musician Hazrat Inayat Khan.

His death in Delhi, 84 years ago, is marked by a three-day Urs, and is attended by followers from around the world. It is a fitting celebration of the life and times of a man, who many believe, pioneered the spread of Sufism to the West.

Hazrat Inayat Khan's story is interesting because he exported a pacifist strand of Islam, much before the West started to equate the religion with radicalism. In keeping with Sufi tradition, Inayat Khan preached tauhid or oneness of being, often using his songs to teach. It helped that he was a trained classical musician, who was hailed for his singing style by many including the Nizam of Hyderabad, who conferred the title of 'Tansen' on him.

Theologian Karin Jironet's book on Inayat Khan records that "he came from an illustrious family of musicians that traced its lineage to Tipu Sultan. His maternal grandfather, Maula Bakhsh was a renowned rudra veena player who taught him the rudiments of classical singing at an early age." She terms "the relationship between the young Inayat and his father as rather reserved ."

Even so, his father is believed to have been a profound influence on the young Inayat's spiritual temperament, particularly his simple philosophy on remorse and self-satisfaction . The young boy was taught "neki kar paani mein daal, badi kar pallu me baandh (Do good and forget about it, but always remember your misdeeds).

But Inayat Khan's greatest influence was his teacher, Shaikh Abu Hashim Madani, who initiated him in the ancient Sufi Chishti Order. Farida Ali, representative of the Hazrat Inayat Khan Trust in Delhi says he followed his teacher's instructions and travelled to Europe and the United States in 1910. "The next sixteen years saw the blossoming of a Sufi tradition associated with him," she says.

The West found Inayat Khan's message appealing, as long-time mureed or follower Nawab Pasnak explains. The essence of his teachings is reflected in the symbol adopted by the international Sufi movement he initiated — a heart with wings and a crescent and star in the centre. "This is symbolic of a heart, which, responding to the knowledge of the divine, gets wings and is liberated ," says Pasnak.

The ongoing Urs celebration, which happens every year at the dargah, emphasizes the message with qawwalis that reflect the age-old Chisti tradition of sama or spreading sukoon or peace through musical events. Ironically, the Urs draws followers from around the globe but has only a limited attendance from India. Farida Ali says the irony lies chiefly in the fact that "Hazrat sahab could not reach out to people in India despite having a great desire to do so."

Is it time for India to know one of its famously spiritual sons a little better? Nearly 90 years after Inayat Khan's death, his remedy for a world afflicted by negativism and hatred is increasingly relevant in this, his signature message: "All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony. And harmony is best given by producing harmony in one's own life."

Khartoum-Mona Al-Bashir:President Al Bashir has underlined that the identity of the Sudan has been settled and the Islam has become the official religion of the State, adding that the peoples of the Sudan are 98% Muslims.

“The new state in the North is the second republic and it is the Salvation in new phase,” aired the president.

Addressing the 'Support Gathering yesterday at Al Kabbashi area of Khartoum North, refuted the claim that the National Congress Party (NCP) was behind the breakaway of the South, noting that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement had allowed the people of the South the right of self-determination and simultaneously stressed the right of the North to enforce the Islamic Sharia.

“The issues of the South is political and has begun long before the Salvation regime," voiced Al Bashir, adding that the Salvation has sacrificed the best of her sons in the war, a thing which was not done by any other northern political power.

According to him, the Islamic Sharia has legitimized the presence of the NCP on the Sudanese political arena, referring to the overwhelming success of the party in the recent elections to re-assume power supported by 90% of the Sudanese peoples.

He assured the gathering that the Sudan economy would not be negatively impacted by south Sudan secession, as oil in the North is more than that in the South, besides, gold. “We have surplus of cement which we can export, we will also export sugar and promote agricultural produce,” Bashir said.

During the occasion the Sects handed over to the president a Document of Covenant signed by nine sect leaders. The document underscored that the Sufi sects, across the board in the Sudan, would work for bolstering the social fabric, backup the Islamic discourse and support the president, praising the Islamic achievements he accomplished.

The document added that the Sufi sects have a remarkable role in entrenching the principles and philosophy of Islam in the Sudan at large and Darfur in particular.

Sufi sects lauded the President's call for forming broad-based government in order to confront current challenges. Sufis movements called on all national political forces as well as NGOs to unify their stances, in order to achieve stability and peace all over Sudan and moreover to prevent hostile forces from shattering peace in the country. Sufi sects and leaders of Sufis have supported the tolerant religious attitudes allover the country.

Governor of Khartoum, Dr. Abdul Rahman El Khidir affirmed that Sects have played tangible role in spreading of Islam in Sudan, renewing his support to President Al Bashir.

Minister of Religious Affairs and Endowment Azhari al Tijani said that al Kabashi area is full of religious symbols, adding that the meeting gathering the highest leadership in the country with Sufi Sects, reflects national solidarity in coincidence with secession of south Sudan, affirming that the mother-state in the north will stay coherent and it will cooperate with the newly-born state in the south.

He added that the meeting sends message to the whole world that Sudanese people back their leadership strongly, adding that the leadership has come from within the grassroots of Sudanese people.

Islamabad: The rising tide of extremism, terrorism and intolerance can be defeated only with the Sufi message of love and peace, said President of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) women wing president Faryal Talpur.

“At present, Pakistani society is in a state of decay and degradation and this trend can be reversed by following the teachings of mystics,”, she said during her visit to the National Book Foundation on Friday.

She called upon intellectuals, writers and the media to play their roles in confronting the country’s social, ethical and educational challenges. She urged them to use their pen to reacquaint the young generation with the “golden traditions” that have been trampled upon.

She said we should all be ready to make sacrifices for the truth and stressed the dire need for educating children with books that inculcate character building, sense of responsibility and respect for the law.

Earlier she took a round of the book shop of the Foundation. The NBF managing Director Mazharul Islam briefed her about the various projects that the NBF had launched in the last two years, including book clubs and libraries in jails, railway stations and villages, to promote a culture of book reading.

The celebrated pioneer of Urdu poetry, Meer Taqi Meer (1723 - 1810), is believed to have recited these lines when taunted by the upstarts of Lucknow and asked about his antecedents. Meer had migrated from a Mughal Delhi in decline — it had been plundered twice in his lifetime, first by Nadir Shah Afshar in 1739 and then nine years later by Ahmed Shah Durrani — to what was then an upwardly mobile province of Awadh ruled by Nawab Asaf ud Daula.

When Zarina Hashmi returns from a post-9/11 New York to an aspiring and ambitious 21st century New Delhi with these once-well-known lines, there is an element of irony that is hard to miss. Zarina could be addressing this inheritance of loss to both; New Delhi and New York. Swamped by recent migrants, post-Partition New Delhi has long abandoned its best ever cultural construct, i.e. the Urdu language and its poetry. New York, in the wake of terrorism and the resultant Islamophobia, is struggling to keep its best ideal, i.e. the promise of freedom of speech and worship in a constitutional democracy.

In her movingly written Conversation with my Self, she says: “I chose Urdu not for the beauty of the calligraphy or the exoticism of its aesthetics. I was placing my work in a historical moment, capturing a time when one wrote and read in Urdu. Urdu was born in Delhi; Amir Khusrau called it Hindawi, the language of Hindustan. Now we are witnessing the slow death of this language in the same city.”

So is Zarina's art political? It could well be in so far as any work of art or thought provokes a spirit of inquiry into the state of the present. And when she looks around her she finds there is enough to question “the very notion of safety, security and refuge”.[2] But Zarina proclaims no manifesto. Hers is a voice that raises oblique queries but refrains from making any final pronouncements. She takes her tactic from the medieval Sufis who spurred inquiry into mathematics, astronomy, mysticism, metaphysics, music and poetry and in doing so subverted the religious and political establishments of the day in favour of inclusion of the popular and the marginal. If ilm (knowledge), ishq (love) and haal (ecstasy) were their spectacular modes of protest and enlightenment, Zarina combines all three in her meditative art.

By superimposing these lines of Meer in handwritten nasta'liq script as a visual device within her highly refined art practice, Zarina also in a sense de-schools the quotation from its more literal readings. This de-contextualisation expands the scope of application, as it were. Not many viewers of her art would be able to read the lines; fewer still would know the context. Yet even at the purely retinal level, the image — of the skeletal road map of Delhi with the lines in nasta'liq squarely suspended on it — makes for its own reading. It appears to be a spider's web of memory that has trapped a fluttering moth of remorse. It becomes a more universal signifier where the visual form spells its own narrative of calm disquiet.

Mirza Ghalib

Meer is not the only poet from Delhi that Zarina invokes in her work. She also refers to the greatest of them all, Mirza Ghalib (1797- 1869). In a personal email to me she quotes a line from Ghalib “ sambhalne de mujhe ae na-umeedi kya qayaamat hai/ke daamaan-e-kheyal-e-yaar chhoota jaaye hai mujh se — let me steady myself, O hopelessness! What a disaster this is! That even the vestment of the thought of my beloved is slipping away from me.” Like Meer, Ghalib too had witnessed the devastation of Delhi, this time during the ghadar (mutiny) of 1857 when the British deposed the last Mughal Emperor Bahadurshah Zafar. With the Partition of India in 1947, both Delhi and Zarina witnessed the painful breaking up of not only families but also of a whole culture and a way of life yet all over again. So she understands the civilisational costs of conflict deeply and personally.

It is useful to recall here that Zarina begins conceiving a work “not with an image but a word” in her mind. Much of art and poetry, and certainly all politics, centres on the valorisation of the place called ‘home' and the metaphor of ‘shelter'. She has cryptically remarked in an interview: “Home is the centre of my universe; I make a home wherever I am. My home is my hiding place - a house with four walls, sometimes four wheels.”[3]

Zarina chose to live and work in New York in the mid-1970s after years of transits between the capitals of the world. There were personal reasons behind the choice. Her diplomat husband Saad Hashmi had died suddenly while still young and her father Sh. Abdur Rashid, a professor of History at Aligarh University, had migrated to Karachi in 1959 where her sister still lives. New York offered the opportunity to work as an artist and keep in touch with her family in Pakistan. She had no home to call her own and used to look out for ‘Spaces to Rent'. Later, that transformed into a work titled Spaces to Hide. Within a few years this engagement with the poetics of home/ shelter resulted in a seminal series of works with cast paper pulp and wood block print on handmade paper titled variously as Spaces to Hide, Corner, Homecoming, Home is a Foreign Place et al.

While working out these concepts intellectually and artistically she was also devising new techniques and methods of making, casting, sizing and printing of paper to give form and materiality to her imagination.[3] Although Zarina has worked as a sculptor with other materials like bronze, steel and wood, she is primarily a printmaker and her favourite medium remains paper. Paper, as she asserts, is like skin: “It can be stained, pierced and moulded and it still has the capability of breathing and aging. It has a fragility and resilience that lasts through time.”

In India, many of these works were shown at Gallery Espace in 2007 in an exhibition evocatively titled kagaz ke ghar or Paper Houses. Apart from the play on words (recalling the phrase “a house of cards” in English; and Guru Dutt's classic “Kagaz ke Phool” in Hindi/Urdu cinema), in that exhibition Zarina had used a line from Ghalib in Urdu: “ be dar-o-deewar sa ik ghar banaaya chaahiye” meaning “make a house without doors or walls”. In the context of Zarina's Single, Self-made, Muslim, Woman of Indian Origin status the next line of the couplet is worth recalling too. Ghalib wrote: bedar-o-deewar sa ik ghar banaaya chaahiye/koi hamsaaya na ho aur paasbaan koi na ho (Make (me) a house without doors or walls /no need for a companion, no sentry required). In her radiant realm of a wall-less self-celebrated solitude, Zarina realises full autonomy as an artist and a woman.

In many works over the last decade or more, Zarina keeps returning to the notion of the ‘self' in transience through time and place. She seems to have so internalised the ‘act of journeying' that it manifests in her work in multiple ways. So from the “line drawn across her heart” that divides India and Paksitan, to the places she visited with her sister (as in “Travels with Rani”), to cities she had lived in or travelled through or had seen in conflict (as in “Cities, Countries and Borders”) — all make for an opus of works on paper that weave a vulnerable thread of personal history within the harsher grid of geopolitical time-space. “I continued to work with not just maps that had personal significance but also maps of regions plagued by ethnic conflicts,” she writes. In the stillness of her studio, the experience of a place and a time seems to crystallise through a process of reduction and renunciation that could be informed by both Sufi thought and Zen practice.

Zen influence

Zarina had studied wood block printing and travelled widely in Japan in 1974 and the influence of the profound monochromatic minimalist Zen aesthetic resonates in her work. In fact, she is the rare odd artist of Indian origin who manages to intuitively conceive an aesthetic that is shorn of clutter, chaos and ornamentation. This is a trait that distinguishes her from most art emanating from the Indian subcontinent. Her display of an amazing leap of imagination or a dazzling flash of technique is invariably tempered by an equally great sense of restraint. There is austerity and starkness in her articulation, but there is also an intense clarity of tone and warmth of timbre. Her visual haikus encapsulate whole narratives of experience, of memory, or just an abstract emotion or even a fleeting feeling … and with such intelligence and economy of expression.

Zarina's passion for geometry is palpable. Geometry, says Zarina, is “sacred practice”. Indeed, virtually all her major work is based on basic geometric forms: the square, the circle and the triangle. As a much travelled and well exposed artist she cannot be oblivious to the trajectory of geometric abstraction that European art history traces from the constructivists to Kazimir Malevich to Josef Albers and beyond. Yet Zarina's art manages to remain resolutely rooted in the Indo-Persian tradition through abstracted images and forms of step wells, niches and arches; through Urdu poetry and through personal history. This tradition has developed concepts for division of space - both private and public - invariably in relation to nature and the concept of paradise (bahisht). So, there is a God-made/man-made; worldly/other-worldly; nature/culture dialectic happening there which puts Zarina's practice of the Sacred Geometry in an orbit of its own.

More recently, Zarina has delved into the concept of noor, or divine light, in Sufism. Like a faquir or darvesh in throes of ecstasy, she lets go of her habitual reserve and splashes and splurges extravagantly with pure gold. Having lived in India and Thailand, she associates gold with the divine and the auspicious. Using 22 carat gold leaf she gilds strings of wooden beads shaped to resemble a giant tasbih (rosary/prayer beads), or she makes large hanging paper screens that are cut or sliced in geometric grids, or woven like a mat, or she casts paper pulp into tablets that have been notched or pierced ... The effect is pure magic.

Completing the binary, Zarina explores the idea of darkness with a mesmerising diptych titled “Dark Night of the Soul” made with black obsidian and Sumi ink on laminated BFK paper. The most iconic work in this exhibition is titled “Blinding Light”. This is a large vertical screen fully gilded with gold leaf, divided in a grid and cut with thin slits. Zarina says: “I have used gold leaf off and on in my practice. I used it sparingly. I thought a screen of this size in gold might be garish; I put it off until it became necessary (my emphasis) to express... The title, “Blinding Light”, was inspired by the legend of Moses asking God to reveal himself. God warned him that he would not be able to stand the light of his presence but Moses insisted. When God revealed himself Moses fainted and the surrounding hills and bushes burned…” Invested with a lifetime of experience, painstakingly honed skill and the final recognition of Faith, this revelation is one of burning purity.

Notwithstanding the current political turmoil back home, an eight-member Egyptian Mawlawyiah troupe enthralled the audience by an audio-visual of music and circular dervish dance whirling around singers in a circle.

A Bangladeshi team, led by Anusheh Anadil, sang the household songs of the famous 18th century poet-philosopher Fakir Lalon Shah, on whom based the recent Golden Peacock winning Bengali film 'Moner Manush'.

The 'bauls' and 'fakirs' of West Bengal's Nadia and Murshidabad districts were huge hits by their spontaneous, simple and meaningful lyrics.

Another Bengal team led by Armaan Fakir presented the little-known 'Bangla Qawwali'. Traditionally performed at the Dargahs, the devotional songs had 'Dhol' and 'Khol' as percussions replacing Tabla.

The first Sufi ensemble also included the 'Warsi Brothers' from Hyderabad, Delhi's 'Druv Sangari' and team, 'Mirs' from Bikaner and 'Haji Md Ahmed Khan Warsi's team from Uttar Pradesh.

"It is a peace concert in times of violence. We want to bring a convergence of ideas about truth, harmony, self-belief and peace through music. It is a celebration of the quest for the divine through love," organiser Amitava Bhattacharya said.

Besides musical performances, the festival included workshops and exhibitions to showcase the traditional culture, beliefs and music of the Sufi mystics.

"We had more than 10,000 people at the open-air concert, while more than 700 people, including young students, learnt about Sufism at the pre-concert workshops," Bhattacharya said.

The event would also help the poor musicians, most of whom were from the rural areas, to earn a livelihood, he said.

The festival was organised by Banglanatak.com in collaboration with the state's tourism department.

By Premankur Biswas, *‘It’s as if the world was abandoning us’* - Indian Express - India; Saturday, February 5, 2011

Waves of protesters shouting anti-Hosni Mubarak slogans — and firebombs — have taken over the Al Haram street outside his home in Cairo. But Amel El Tony, who has not spoken to his wife for a day, is not worried. “My family will stay indoors. They know better than to step out,” he says.

Away from the turmoil in his country, the Sufi dervish who is currently in India to participate in Sufi Sutra, a Sufi music festival here, adds, “I have faith in the Almighty. I can’t afford to get agitated. We are messengers of peace. We have to perform in his name.”

When Tony and his six troupe members took a flight from Cairo International Airport on February 2 — six days after the protests erupted — they witnessed a sight they wish to forget soon. “The airport was crowded with people from foreign consulates and tourists who were boarding special flights away from the country. It’s as if the world was abandoning us,” he says.

Bonnyrigg artist Khaled Sabsabi has put Sufism under the spotlight for his contribution to Sydney Festival’s Edge of Elsewhere art project.

Sabsabi spent three months filming the meditation and chanting ceremonies of a southwest Sydney Sufi community for the project, which is at Campbelltown Arts Centre until March 13.

“It’s an insight that’s hardly ever seen in Australian society,” Sabsabi said. “For me, particularly coming from a Muslim background, it’s not about one specific religion; it’s about all of us seeking wisdom or knowledge.

“In its simplest form it’s about humanity and inner peace.”

Having migrated to Australia with his family in 1978, the Lebanese-born artist knows a thing or two about the experience of migrant communities, particularly in the southwest.

Growing up in Granville, Sabsabi found a creative outlet in hip-hop music, which allowed him to express his own sense of cultural and social displacement.

He has since worked in youth prisons and refugee camps as a community worker, which has inspired much of his extensive portfolio of multimedia artworks.

Sabsabi hopes his three simple, largely unedited video projections of Sufi ceremonies will help to demystify Sufism and deflect cultural misunderstandings of all cultural communities.

“I think the idea of demystifying something is to create access and to break down pre-conceived ideas,” he said. “There is a problem in the community when people don’t understand what the community is about.”

Two people were killed and over two dozen injured in a bomb blast on Thursday night outside the Baba Haider Saeen shrine in Lahore. The explosion took place on the eve of the second day of the Urs of Baba Saeen. The number of casualties remained relatively low in comparison with other such attacks because of the low-intensity explosives used. However, the terrorists got their desired result: putting fear in the hearts of people who visit Sufi shrines.

Last year was the deadliest as far as attacks on Sufi shrines is concerned. The terrorists attacked the most famous shrines in Pakistan: Data Darbar in Lahore, Baba Farid Ganj Shakar’s shrine in Pakpattan, and Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s shrine in Karachi. The attacks on Data Darbar and Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s shrines took place on Thursdays just like the recent attack on Baba Haider Saeen’s shrine. Most people visit shrines on Thursday as it is considered a sacred day and langar (food) is distributed in shrines all over the country that day. The hardliner Islamists consider visiting shrines a form of shirk (associating partners with God), thus it is not a complete surprise that they are targeting these places. For them, no place is sacred, be it a mosque, imambargah, shrine, etc. Granted that it is difficult to secure the whole country but the government needs to provide security to the obvious targets. Security measures taken in the month of Muharram this year were impressive, but we now need sustained security for all places that could be possible targets.

In recent months we have witnessed a shrinking of public space. Most arts and culture events now take place inside private spaces. After the World Performing Arts Festival was attacked by low-intensity blasts in 2008, most people are reluctant to attract the wrath of the terrorists.

This is indeed a sad reflection on the kind of society we have now become. Tolerance for arts and culture depreciated over the years because of the moral brigade and now even visiting Sufi shrines has become a hazard. It is time to take back our public space from the terrorists. The government needs to launch ferocious crackdowns against all terrorist outfits. The citizens, too, need to make their voice heard by raising awareness and helping Pakistan become a tolerant society once again.

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

BY TNI Correspondent, *The way of the mystic* - The News International - Karachi, Pakistan; Thursday, February 3, 2011

Karachi: The Goethe-Institut was the venue of a movie highlighting the tradition of the Dervishes and Sufis in the Sub-Continent Wednesday evening.

Titled “The Red Sufi”, the movie, produced by Martin Weinhart, traces the train journey of Dr Wasim Frembgen, an anthropologist at the University of Munich in Germany from Lahore to Sehwan Sharif, the site of Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine.

A departure from the conventional form of religiosity, the movie depicts the mystics approach to The Almighty and their endeavour to feel at one with God. The movie begins in Lahore amid the observance of rites and rituals of the saint’s followers in the most uninhibited of manner. There are the whirling Dervishes with long, flowing robes, unkempt hair, and whirling and gyrating to the beat of drums played with all the gusto the drummers could muster. Unconventional as it may sound, there are women going into the whirling trances and ecstacy too alongside men. All this while the dancers have their eyes fixed and arms outstretched heavenward as if in supplication to The Almighty. The movie shows the producer attending a concert at one of the shrines in Lahore where the lyrics sung to classical music tunes music centre around the glory of God.

The movie highlights the quaint bazaars of Lahore just as one had been transported back into time into the Eleventh or twelfth centuries. It also shows sections of the Shia community participating in the rituals.

Then the train departs on its journey to its destination, Sehwan Sharif in Sindh, to the tomb of the most venerated mystic saint, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar where the religious slogans reverberate through the air every now and then. Here too all the rites and rituals pivot around dancing Derveshes and full-throated hymns in praise of The Almighty.

However, there also are scenes in the movie which some could find squeamish. For instance there’s a scene featuring eunuchs dancing away. Dr Frembgen talks to them and asks them as to what brought them there.

In their somewhat raven-throated masculine voices, contrasting with their totally feminine attire, these denizens of the genetic third world reply that they come there because no matter how difficult, how impossible, when they come over to the shrine and pray for a favour, it is invariably granted.

This is supposed to speak for the spirituality of the movement and also bring home the fact that the intermediate gender are as human as anyone of us and it is cruelty to treat them as lower forms of creation.

What is revealing about the movie is that so many highly educated people are devotees of the saint. Two of those featured were highly qualified surgeons.

Introducing the movie, Dr Frembgen said that he was fascinated by the living expressions of the Sufi tradition in Pakistan.

“We should pay due attention to the religiosity of the local traditions”, he said.

Dr Frembgen said that attendance at the shrines in the recent past had declined because of the security situation, the bombings and the growing militancy.

The screening of the movie was followed by an enlivening question-answer session which reflected all shade of opinion, from opposition to the content of the movie, to endorsement, and philosophical analysis.

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